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WAS IT LOVE 


^ BY 

PAUL.BOURGET 

^ II 


TRANSLATED BY CAMDEN CURWEN 

I 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW YORK 

WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY 
1891 







Copyright, 1891, by 

WORTHINGTON CO. 


486555 

AUG 2 0 1942 


Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York 


^ 51-- SM-^vv-,0 I 

\ 



WAS IT LOVE? 


I. 

A CARRIAGE ACCIDENT. 

“ What great events from little causes spring !" 

One warm and pleasant afternoon in the month of 
April, 1877, a brougham was about to round the corner 
of the Avenue d’Antin on its way to the Champs Ely- 
sees, when the horse took fright at a bicycle and bolted. 
The carriage veered in contact with the curb, one wheel 
came off, and it was overturned. Its occupant, the 
Countess de Candolle, “ one of the prettiest women in 
Paris,” as the papers say, escaped with a slight shaking 
and a severe fright. But her arrangements for the day 
were upset, and judging by the little white slate now 
lying at the bottom of the carriage. with its former com- 
panions, a mother-of-pearl card-case and bijou travelling 
clock, her visiting-list had been a long one that particular 
afternoon. Gabrielle de Candolle’s fair brow was clouded 
w'ith a frowm of vexation. So when she spoke to the 
footman, it w'as in tones of irritation, little like her usual 
speech. 


2 


IVas It Love 7 


“ Fran9ois, as soon as the horse is on its feet, leave 
that simpleton,” pointing to the coachman, “ to see to his 
handiwork, and go at once to the Rue Royale cab-stand. 
I shall want a victoria at Madame de Tilliere’s in less 
than half an hour.” 

Gabrielle turned and walked away. Her fairy-like 
bronzed boots were but ill-suited for the short walk to 
the Rue Matignon, where lived the lady whose name 
Gabrielle had just hurled at the unhappy Frangois : and 
the countess was out of earshot before the footman, who 
stood looking conspicuously silly, could articulate a word. 

Gabrielle thought only of the upsetting of her after- 
noon, with all its complicated plans. 

“ Idiot ! ” she muttered. “And on the very day of all 
the week when I was busiest ! I wonder if Juliette is in. 
... If not, so much the worse for me. I must wait for 
her at her mother’s. ... I hope she is at home. It is 
ten days since I saw her last. I declare, in Paris there is 
no time to do anything one wants to do.” 

But, however vexed, the countess made the best of her 
way afoot, with her bright curls crowned by a little bon- 
net all bows and ostrich feathers, and in her tight-fitting 
gray satin ulster, that set off the charms of her supple 
figure to advantage. Nor was the average Parisian blind 
to the occasion. It was as good as a comedy to watch 
the actions of the passers-by. From the respectful way 
in which they dropped their eyes you might imagine they 
had not noticed her : but wait till the countess has passed ! 
Once, twice, thrice, they crane their necks to note the 
gait and figure, the gown and bonnet of the aristocrat. 
And the women ! How they follow her with their eyes ! 
Let some psychologist explain the mystery of this attrac- 


A Carriage Accident. 


3 


tion. It is magnetic, and is unmistakable. As for Ga- 
brielle, she had but little need to look round to be aware 
of the “effect ’’ she was producing. And let the man of 
mental science solve this further riddle : Why was the 
lady tickled with the idea that even the very humpback 
and the cripple were admiring her — Madame de Candolle, 
one of the haute noblesse of France ? Not that in her 
own circle there was anything of the coquette about 
Gabrielle. She had just escaped from a real danger ; 
her new brougham, sent for all the way to London, was 
no doubt a wreck ; a valuable horse, the best in the 
stable, probably ruined for life. It was enough to vex 
an angel, and yet she was profoundly conscious of the 
secret stir her appearance was making, even pleased by 
it. Such are the contrarieties of human nature. 

And so the frown had left her forehead by the time the 
charming “Saint” — for so her devoted friend Juliette 
sometimes playfully called her — lifted her neatly gloved 
hand to the old-fashioned knocker of the quiet mansion in 
the Rue Matignon. She had tasted the genuine pleasure, 
dear, perhaps, not less to saints than womankind, of the 
assurance that she was outrageously pretty ; and now she 
stood within the stained-glass porch, awaiting news of her 
dear friend, more with the placid air of one who has been 
listening to sweet music than the startled face of one 
who has but just emerged from danger. Perhaps her 
smiles were owing to the news that Madame de Tilli^re 
had not gone out. To find a confidante so soon, to whom 
one might relate the ins and outs of a distressful accident, 
was almost to turn the accident into a thing of joy. And 
as Gabrielle tripped across the sunlit court to join her 
friend, she murmured pleasantly : 


4 


Was It Love 7 


“Yes, I am sure that Juliette will be more frightened 
than I was myself.” 

Though scarcely a dozen years have passed away since 
the events that followed this unexpected visit, how many 
people are there left, even in the sphere of the De Can- 
dolles, who remember the lovely and rather mysterious 
woman whom Gabrielle was glad to call her “bosom 
friend,” and to acknoAvledge as her spiritual sister ? It 
will not, then, be out of place for us to paint her portrait 
in a dozen words ; for Juliette, even by her friend’s ac- 
quaintances, was not intimately known in the days of the 
long ago — and since then has disappeared. 

Modest, reserved, even to the low-water mark of self- 
effacement, Madame de Tilliere was one of those who, 
though in the world, are not entirely of it ; one of those 
who exert as much diplomacy to be allowed to live a 
quiet life as rivals employ in the effort to shine and reign 
a little while society’s mock queens. For outward sym- 
bol of her nature and index of her taste, what more 
appropriate than the quaint old mansion, on whose carved 
stone porch now falls the aristocratic silhouette of Ga- 
brielle? An atmosphere of solitude seemed to surround 
this ancient house, cut off, as it was, from other habita- 
tions by a spacious garden. 

If it is in the nature of things that the v/orld has al- 
ready forgotten this sweet woman, to make up for it her 
frietids, by no means numerous, still cherish her dear 
memory with a warmth the years cannot change. To the 
worldly mind which pauses to ask why one of the loveli- 
est women of ’77 was content to pass her life in a kind of 
eclipse, those who are even yet her friends respond : ! 

she had suffered so! ” — pronouncing her name as that of 


A Carriage Accident. 


5 


one whose tragedy was all too deep and sacred for the 
common ear. The catastrophe which had made Juliette 
a widow justified, in part, this explanation of her charac- 
ter. The Marquis Roger de Tilli^re, her husband of 
three months, one of the most brilliant captains on the 
French staff, was killed in July, 1870, by the side of Gen- 
eral Douay, by one of the very first shots fired in that 
disastrous campaign. The news, announced by telegram 
to the marquise, threw her into a state of lethargy danger- 
ous equally to mind and body, from which she did not 
rally for a month. Was not this reason enough for her 
remaining broken-hearted ? Yet however terrible and 
strange the happenings of life, they create no new mate- 
rial in our natures, save as they influence complexities 
of character. Thus left with her freedom and a fortune 
at the early age of twenty, Madame de Tilliere and her 
mother chose to live in calm seclusion. With their two 
hundred thousand francs a year, it was evident these 
ladies had no intention of being swallowed in the fashion- 
able mob that circulates in cliques and clatter round 
those twin idols. Mammon and Astarte. Some instinct 
froze these ladies in their tracks ; and heedful of every 
point of true hospitality, they became artists in friendship 
— and their house the very shrine of sociality for those 
who had the entrde. To individualize, to be refined, to 
be particular — such was their charming custom, both in 
love and friendship, and in externals, too. To them the 
world was an interpretation, not a tyranny. But were they 
altogether happy ? That was their own business, not so- 
ciety’s. Thus, in course of time, the presence of these 
ladies in the salons of the great became a sort of favor. 
In all this there was some danger of these two becom- 


6 


Was It Love! 


ing artificial in their loneliness. But tli^ir society was 
infinitely attractive. To this day, should you meet the 
painter F^lix Mirant, old General de Jardes, Monsieur 
d’Avangon, diplomatist of the old school, or Ludovic 
Accragne, past prefect, and dwell, in confidence, on cer- 
tain themes which, however remotely, serve to remind 
them of the sweet lady of the Rue Malignon, you will cer- 
tainly hear them interpose with : 

“Ah! if you had only known Madame de Tilliere 
or, 

“ That was a man you would be certain not to meet at 
Madame de Tilli^re's ! ” or, 

“ There was only one woman I ever knew — and that 
was Madame de Tilliere — who " 

And so on. But do not notice them too much ; or they 
will put on a rather oracular look, and turn to another 
subject. It would seem as if these men really learned 
“ how to talk ” at the dear old receptions in the Rue 
Matignon. How else could they possibly give you, at 
this distance of time, such a scintillating word-picture 
of the grand woman who once was Juliette de Tilliere? 
And of her charm ? To call up the spirit of Juliette, it 
will be easiest to go to Madame de Candolle, if she 
will talk to you about her — which is seldom, for “ the 
Saint” dreads to ponder on the memory of Juliette with 
a fear that is born of remorse. When the mind is in a 
state of tension, it is difficult to dissociate ourselves from 
the cause of certain evils that have happened to our 
friends ; albeit we were only the innocent instrument of 
chance. Often and often the high-spirited Gabrielle will 
sigh to herself : “ If we had never seen each other on 
that April day ! If I had not called in the Rue Ma- 


A Carriage Accident. 


7 


tignon ! If my brougham had not broken down ! ” Is 
it blind chance, or is it destiny, that oftentimes the weal 
or woe of an entire life will turn upon a word of informa- 
tion, a card of introduction — upon a train that we have 
failed to catch, upon a talk that we enjoyed one day “ we 
met by accident ” ? 

Accident, chance, destiny, or Providence — it is certain 
that, as Madame de Candolle stood in the sunny porch, 
none of these complex ideas troubled that golden head 
or followed her through the larger reception-room on her 
way to the snug boudoir where Juliette was in the habit 
of receiving. 

Madame de Tilliere was writing at a davenport in the 
angle of a bay-window commanding a view of the gar- 
den. Lilac and pink hawthorn were all in bloom ; the 
scene was an epitome of peace. As soon as she saw 
Madame de Candolle she rose, with a little glad cry of 
surprise, and folded her in her arms. 

“ Look, dear ! ” she said, “ I am all ready, dressed, 
and waiting for the carriage. I was just going to your 
house to get the news.” 

“ Where you would not have found me,” responded 
the Countess, “ nor anybody who was able to inform you 
that you might have never seen poor me again in this 
world ! ” 

“ You are romancing ? ” 

“No, I assure you. I have but just escaped a great 
danger.” 

“ Why do you frighten me ? ” 

Then Gabrielle began to tell the tale, a little bit ex- 
aggerated, of the carriage accident ; and Juliette punc- 
tuated the story with inarticulate cries of terror. It was a 


8 


IVas It Love! 


pretty nest for such a pair of friends, as the afternoon sun 
shone in with the splendor of pleased April, and the cheery 
wood-fire crackled on the brass andirons. By a touch of 
spiritualism that seemed well-suited to her charming per- 
son, Juliette had had this boudoir of her own fitted up 
with the entire contents of a Louis XVI, saloon, removed 
from Nan9ay, dating from the day when the castle was 
restored by an ancestor of Juliette’s, Charles de Nanpay, 
the friend of Rivarol. The grey-white tints of these old- 
fashioned pieces of furniture, magnificently carved, the 
silvery nuances of the old silks with w^hich they were 
upholstered, blended wuth the fading pigments of the 
family portraits in their heavy gold frames. It seemed 
Juliette had a good idea that these survivals of a gracious 
antiquity would harmonize very w^ell wuth her peculiar 
style of beauty — and she was not mistaken. With a cloud 
of powder on those blond locks of hers, a little rouge upon 
her cheeks, a tiny patch of jet plaster at one corner of 
her mouth, high-heeled red slippers on her feet, and a 
Marie Antoinette robe upon her gentle figure, Juliette 
might have passed as a cousin of the celebrated Laura de 
Nangay, whose portrait was over the chimney-piece, side 
by side with that of the Marquis Charles. E^ven without 
the illusion of patch and powder, she bore a startling 
likeness to her great-grandmother, so umyorthily rewarded 
for a romantic passion — in the long ago — by a scathing 
passage in the Memoires of Tilly. In Juliette, as in this 
ancestress, the sweet childishness of expression, as of a 
choice but fragile Dresden statuette, was corrected and 
adorned by a certain depth of gaze and a slight sadness 
of smile. At times, w'heu there was something going on 
that moved her, though she might not wish to seem ex- 


A Carriage Accident. 


9 


cited, her’ pupils would dilate, and Juliette’s blue eyes 
became nearly black, giving one the impression of 
an almost morbid sensibility, controlled by a strong 
will. 

Juliette’s face, thoroughbred and speaking thus of 
feelings and of passions pent within, contrasted with 
Madame de Candolle’s, — equally patrician, but the index 
of an energetic spirit and of action. The latter was a 
picture by Van Dyck “dressed ” by V/orth ; the former 
an old-time pastel by Doucet. When these two had fin- 
ished tattling of the mutual happenings of their last ten 
days, scraps of news about society and visitors, came the 
inevitable invitation. 

“ When will you come to dinner, dear, to have a real, 
long talk ? Why not to-morrow ? ” said the Countess. 

“To-morrow, no,’’ said Juliette. “My cousin from 
Nanpay is coming. But the 7iext day ? ” 

“ Thursday ? I am not free. I have to dine with Sis- 
ter d’Arcole. V/ill you come on Friday ? ’’ 

“ It is a ‘ fixture,’ ” cried Juliette, laughing. “I dine 
with the Avangons. Fancy me., a peacemaker in the house 
of my old worshipper ! Luckily, his wife goes to bed at 
an unearthly hour, and if it is your opera night, and you 

have nobody better to share your box ” 

“ Not a soul. Better ? I will come for you to the 
Avangons’, at nine o’clock. But it is an age to Friday ! 
I have an idea. Why should you not come to me this 
very evening ? ” 

“Look at this letter, scarcely dry! ” exclaimed Juliette. 
“ I have written to Mirant, who has been begging for an 

evening ever so long, and as we were alone ’’ 

“ You will not post the letter ! — that is all. Oblige me ! 


lO 


IVas It Love ? 


This dinner to-night will be a task without you. It is a 
hunting-party, you know. Prosny, D’Artelles, Mos6, and 
then ” — with hesitation at her lips — “and then — a man that 
perhaps you would hardly like to meet. You know, cherie^ 
you are so what the English call ‘particular.’ ” 

“And the French ^ prude,'" put in Juliette, smiling. 
“And all because I don’t care to come and dine with 
you amid the hurly burly. But who is this mysterious 
personage to whom 1 am painted as objecting so to be 
presented ? ” 

“Oh ! not so very mysterious,” laughed the Countess. 
“ Only Raymond Casal.” 

“ The Casal of Madame de Corcieux ? ” asked Juliette ; 
and after an affirmative nod : 

“ The fact is,” said Gabrielle, “ that Monsieur Poyanne 
would disapprove ! I should not escape the question: 
‘ Why does Madame de Candolle keep such people on her 
visiting list ? ’ ” 

It w'as clear that this friend, about whose surveillance 
Gabrielle rallied Juliette, was no favorite of the Countess. 
As if encouraged by her owm enjoyment of the fun, she 
went on with a mocking laugh: 

“Tell him, anyway, my love, that Casal is more my 
husband’s friend than mine. And — will you let me speak 
my mind t ‘ Casal ’ signifies, no doubt, for you, for Mon- 
sieur Poyanne, and for many more, a wicked fellow, who 
only seeks a woman’s company to do her wrong ; a 
fop who has compromised Madame de Corcieux, and 
Madame Ethorel, and others ‘ a thousand and three ’ ; 
a gambler for the wildest stakes ; a mere animal, who 
passes from the gaming table to the fencing-school, from 
luncheon to the stable, and finishes the day ‘ drunk as a 


A Carriage Accident. 


II 


lord.’ Isn’t that a picture o( your Casa.], and of your De 
Poyanne’s Casal ? ” 

“My Casal ! ” cried Juliette. “ I know him not. And 
‘my Poyanne’— not that. I won’t be held responsible 
for the antipathies of my acquaintances ! ” 

“ Yes, ‘your Poyanne,’ ” persisted Gabrielle. “ Look 
you : if Poyanne was a widower, instead of living merely 
separate, and that — wife of his were to do him the favor 
of dying in Florence ” 

“ Go on ! ” said Juliette. 

“ I always think that you would be willing to marry 
him ; and as for Poyanne, I will wager he would jump at 
the chance, because he mounts guard already over you 
with all the airs of a betrothed.” 

“ Nevertheless, I don’t imagine he nurses such a pros- 
pect,” cried Juliette, with a merry laugh ; “ and if the 
case were to come before me, I am sure I don’t know 
what my sentence would be ; and even if it were so, a 
fiaticde of twenty-seven years of age and some odd months 
is perfectly capable of warding off the terrible charms of 
a ‘ man of the world,’ who is at one and the same time a 
bit of a fop, a good deal of a gambler, very much of a 
jockey, almost a fencing-master, and not a little of the 
drunkard — for isn’t that the correct likeness of your 
guest ? ” 

“You cut me short just as I was going to tell you that 
such a myth is no more like Raymond Casal than our poor 
Napoleon the Third was like the tyrant limned by Hugo. 
Is it Raymond Casal’s fault that he has succumbed, more 
than once, to the facile charms of a designing woman ? 
You have good cause to smile ! Was it Pauline or he 
that made the echoes ring ? All that I know is, he has 


12 


IVas It Lovel 


never spoken a sinister word to me, or given me a doubt- 
ful look, and that he is extremely talented, extremely 
witty, full of strange experiences in India, China, Austral- 
asia, the States — the world ! Man of pleasure ! Gam- 
bler ! He is a little better off than the others, and not 
quite so secretive. He owns more horses, made more 
bets, and lost more money. Here’s a budget to make a 
fuss about. I don’t deny he fences — very well. But he 
never boasts about it, and I have not yet heard of his run- 
ning any of his friends through the body. It is possible 
he drinks ; but, seriously, he has always had the good sense 
to come under my eyes conspicuously sober. Do you know 
what this man really is ? A spoilt child to whom the 
world has been too good. Yet he has kept a thousand 
charming qualities. And with it all. . . . But you have 
seen him for yourself ? ” 

“ I think somebody once pointed him out to me at the 
Opera,” said Juliette ; “a big man with dark hair and a 
tawny beard.” 

“ It must have been a long, long time ago. He has 
only a mustache now,” said the Countess. “ How very 
odd, this Paris life of ours ! I should have thought you 
rnust have met a hundred times.” 

“I go about so little,” said Juliette; “nor do I notice 
every one I chance to see.” 

“ Well, dear, you must come out to-night to visit me, 
and you will notice our Casal. It is to be ? ” 

“ Perhaps. But how you run away with words ! If I 
’ did not know you well enough to ” 

“ If you did not know me well enough, you would vow 
I was in love with ‘ our Casal ’ — isn’t that what you mean ? 
What would you have, my love ? I am a soldier’s daugh- 


A Carriage Accident. 


13 


ter, and I loathe the want of logic and injustice of the 
world. And so I fight against it. You will denounce 
me to Poyanne ? ” 

“Still harping on Poyanne?” Juliette shrugged her 
shoulders. 

“ Still harping on Poyanne. Because, when he is out 
of mind, we two are happy. And when he talks to you, 
I know so well it takes effect. But some one’s coming. 
It is the carriage that I ordered.” 

Listen to the pretty babbling of “Good-by, good- 
by ! ” as the footman announces the Countess’s victoria ; 
the “ So soon,” and the “ You have been here only five 
minutes ; ” the “ I must go, indeed,” and “ Till this even- 
ing, dear, good-by again ! ” And then to the sister- 
kisses; and then the rippling laughter at the name of 
Casal whispered once again ; and then, when Gabrielle 
is really gone, the gentle tick-tack of the ormolu clock 
on the mantel, and the rustle of the burning oak-logs on 
the hearth. 

All alone Juliette sits forward to her desk, and tears up 
the note of invitation to the painter Mirant ; then she 
takes a large, official-looking sheet of paper from a drawer, 
and twists her pen between her fingers, as those do who 
find it hard to begin a letter, looking off into the garden, 
now less beautiful because the sky is overclouded, till at 
last she finds it in her to begin. And this is how the let- 
ter read : 


“ Dear Count : Please do not call to-night till ten o’clock. 
Gabrielle has just this minute gone out. I had not seen her for 
ten days, and was obliged to tell her I would dine with her to- 
night. Do not scold me for keeping you waiting two hours over 
your time to tell me how you spoke in the Chamber of Deputies, 


14 


Was It Love 7 


and what took place there. And do not come with your eyes cast 
down to reproach me silently, and so untruly, with my worldliness. 
You know too well what all the world would be to me without you. 

“Juliette.” 

And when she had sealed the despatch she wrote the 
name of a well-known orator of the Right upon the enve- 
lope, a man who had played a part at Versailles analogous 
to that which M. de Mun fills in the Chamber to-day — 
Henry de Poyanne. 

All which shows that the most intimate friends very 
often indulge in only semi-confidences, and proves, as a 
modern cynic says, that if you want the whole truth you 
2^ must go to those who owe you some small grudge. Since, 
if Madame de Candolle suspected, as we have seen, 
that De Poyanne cared for Juliette, she was a thousand 
miles from thinking that the feeling was reciprocal. For 
it was impossible to read the placid tribute at the close 
without concluding that the politician held the foremost 
place, in all sincerity, in the sweet widow’s sentiments. 
One might also read between the lines an excuse in ad- 
vance, as indeed was meant, for Juliette’s frowardness in 
persisting in seeing what “ our Casal ” was like. Would 
not Poyanne, who this day was to take a prominent part 
in an important debate, be rather scandalized if he knew 
that the woman of his heart had not only put off meeting 
him with a rather frivolous excuse, but was actually going 
to dine side by side with a man he thought he had the 
best of reasons to despise ? Juliette had not told Gabri- 
elle that several times, especially on behalf of Pauline de 
Corcieux, Poyanne had spoken of Casal in terms of abso- 
lute disgust. Had she looked her own writing in the 
face she might have discovered the signs of incipient 


A Carriage Accident. 


15 


rebellion against the authority of Henry de Poyanne. 
And then she might have stood aghast at the thought 
that the step from incipient rebellion to open rupture is 
quite an easy one ; and so she might not have sent the 
letter, and not have gone to dine with Madame de Can- 
dolle ; and then she might have never met Casal, and 
this story would not have been written, for the life of 
Juliette de Tilliere would have been entirely different. 
But when we w’rite to those we care for it is seldom 
that we analyze our sentences ; and, even if we tried 
to, we might fail, sometimes, to catch our own inner 
meanings. Thus lightly are the threads of our destinies 
woven from the ’cobwebs of light words ; and half an 
hour later, when Juliette stopped her carriage in the Rue 
Montaigne to put the letter with her own hands into the 
box, she little thought that with it all her future was 
slipping through her well-gloved fingers, any more than 
Gabrielle dreamed, when she pressed her friend to meet 
Casal, she was pronouncing on the lovely widow a harsher 
sentence than immediate execution. 




II. 

A NEW FRIEND. 

“ For curiosity the child 

Snatches at that or this ; 

Till, by a butterfly beguiled. 

It oversteps the abyss.” 

— Arwn. 

Madame de Tilli^re had a pretty way, when she 
knew she was going out to dinner, of finishing her toilet 
in advance, so as to be on hand to wait on her mother at 
dinner, even if she could not share the meal. Madame 
de Nan^ay was in the daily habit, in accordance with 
thirty years of country life, of sitting down to table at 
6:45 to the minute. The dining-room on the first floor, 
large enough to seat a dozen persons comfortably, was 
common to the two. Madame de Nangay worshipped 
her beautiful Juliette, and the latter was equally proud 
of her mother — sentiments by no means too common in 
^ every-day families — so that the whole house had been 
arranged, and daily usages detailed, in order that their 
lives should flow on gently side by side where they 
might not commingle. The elder lady had her own 
reception-room, her own servants, and kept her even 
tenor independently of Juliette ; winter or summer up at 
six o’clock, frost, rain, dark, or shine, so as to attend mass 
at the neighboring convent ; with equal regularity to bed 


A New Friend. 


17 


at nine p.m.; seldom descending to the ground-floor. It 
was her wish that her daughter should be free as air in 
all her ways and movements, yet in part protected by 
a mother’s benevolent presence. With admirable self- 
abnegation, Madame de Nanpay would hardly allow her 
daughter to spoil her by waiting at table so assiduously 
every time Juliette went out to dinner or to a reception. 
When first, three years before our story opens, Henry -■ 
de Poyanne began to pay his court to Juliette, how many 
excuses had he not invented to come and feast his world- 
weary eyes on the spectacle of such a mother waited on 
by such a daughter — the last in grandest evening costume, 
^crowned with jewels as a daybreak lily with dewdrops 
the other evermore in sombre black ; the serenity of the 
dear old home illumined by two ancient silver lamps, 
the semi-silences of love a benediction on the lonely 
widow’s simple meal. 

This evening Madame de Tilliere wore a dress of rose- 
colored satin, festooned and subdued by draperies of 
black lace. In her ears and amidst her waving, delicate 
light-brown hair, with just a little glint of gold in it, shone 
speckless pearls. Her corsage just lent to sight the fair 
lines of a rather slender bust, and revealed the statuesque 
neck poised on shoulders that would have graced a water- 
nymph. In Juliette one beheld the beauty of a woman 
and a girl at once. As she waited on Madame de Nangay, 
now filling her glass with wine and v/ater, now peeling a 
pear for her, or playfully sharing a saucerful of fruit and 
milk, her delicate white arms and small hands were seen 
at their best, had there been anybody except her own 
dear mother to behold. Brighter than ever the daughter’s 
blue eyes shone with her task of love, betraying none of 


2 


i8 


Was It Love 7 


those deep-sea flashes that were wont to gleam under the 
influence of emotions of less simplicity. Her mother 
reflected, as beloved ones will, the glow of Juliette’s 
expression. 

With a returning interest in the affairs of society, Ma- 
dame de Nan9ay told herself that if Juliette was occasion- 
ally really pleased to be away from home, it was not so 
very impossible that some day or other she might remarry. 
Quite soon, the poor old mother thought, at any rate in 
no long time, it was in nature that her lovely daughter 
would be left alone with the universe. With this on her 
mind, Madame de Nan^ay, in the high, clear tones of those 
whom age has deafened, said to Juliette : 

‘‘ I almost have it in my heart to be jealous of Ga- 
brielle, so much do you rejoice over the thought of meet- 
ing her. And what company will there be this evening 
to meet my Juliette ?” 

“ Not many, mother,” said she, feeling a guilty little 
blush already on her cheeks, though none was there. 
“ A few hunting men belonging to De Candolle’s set. It 
is to keep her in countenance that Gabrielle has begged 
me not to fail her.” 

“ Ah ! my child, perhaps it is the bad example of that 
distracted household that prevents you from remarry- 
ing,” said Madame de Nan^ay, shaking her head, and 
then sadly : “ Poor little woman, so good, so brave, and 
neither chick nor child to sustain her tender heart in her 
trouble.” 

“ So good, so brave,” assented Juliette, with a sigh that 
was almost a sob, at the thought of her dear friend’s 
hopeless trouble ; her eyes dim with indignation at the 
thought. Louis de Candolle, before his marriage, had 


A Hew Friend. 


19 


been in love with a certain Madame Bernard. Not 
many months after his union with Gabrielle he renewed 
the acquaintance, and had flaunted it almost in the eyes 
of society, certainly in those of his long-suffering wife, 
who, for the sake of the family name, in pride of long 
descent, was unwilling to make a public scandal of the 
ungentle conduct of her husband. So heroically did she 
carry out this haughty resolution that one item of these 
intertwined lives will show the nobility of Gabrielle ; the 
money that kept up their state was hers, not his ; nor 
would she contemplate this unkind husband being re- 
duced to beg of an outraged wife. And Madame de 
Candolle trusted that some day there might come a son 
to sustain the grand old name to which she was roman- 
tically devoted. Besides, she loved her husband still. 
Madame de Tilliere was acquainted with this dark family 
history ; she had heard enough from Gabrielle’s lips to be 
able to sympathize with the bitterness of her married life. 

Completing the chain of her mother’s ideas, she said : 
“ I do not fancy I should show such patience ! ” 

“Child, I was wrong to bid you think of such sad 
things. I cannot bear to see your face grow cold. Glad- 
den your mother with your prettiest smile again, and we 
will talk of something else. What were we saying ? I 
had not seen my little one so gay for months ! ” . . . 

“My darling mother!” thought Juliette later in the 
evening, as the carriage whirled her to the Rue de Tilsitt, 
“ how she loves, how she loves me I And how well she 
reads my soul I For it is true this dinner at Gabrielle’s 
interests me as much as though I were a six-year child 
escorted to my birthday party. I wonder — wonder why 
it is ! ” . . . 


20 


Was It Love t 


Yes ; why ? 

Ten minutes — say, for instance, the ten minutes that 
separate the Rue de Tilsitt from Rue Matignon — had 
often sufficed Juliette for the analysis of every little thing 
observed in an entire evening. But on this occasion it 
seemed as if hours instead of minutes would hardly have 
been long enough to (disentangle the very cat’s-cradle of 
emotion^that had twisted up her thoughts since the talk 
with Gabrielle de Candolle. Though Juliette’s reflections 
were usually bright and to the point, to-night she seemed 
unable to explain her own imaginings. 

But it was with outward composure that Juliette 
stepped out at the De Candolles’, and ordered the car- 
riage to return at a quarter to ten, prompt. With the 
. same unmoved visage she faced the assembled com- 
pany, and even when Casal had been singled out by 
name for introduction, it was impossible to aver that 
Madame de Tilli^re took any special notice of the 
man for whose sake alone she had accepted the unex- 
pected invitation. As for Raymond Casal, he bowed to 
Juliette with apparently equal indifference — so much 
so that Gabrielle, who had been busily overlooking 
their bearing, came to the conclusion that Juliette’s 
coldness was due to something that Poyanne had 
said. 

“ Well, and how do you like him ? ” she asked her 
friend, as soon as they could get together. 

Juliette answered with a smile : “ He’s not so very — 
Oh ! a good-looking man enough — of whom there are so 
many” 

“ I told you in advance he was not your style, dear,” 
answered Gabrielle ; “ but I warn you, he sits next to 


A New Friend. 


21 


you at table. If you don’t desire his company, there is 
still time to change.” 

“What is the use?” said Juliette, gracefully inclining 
her head. 

Casal knew very well the contrast that existed between 
his appearance and his reputation — a matter at which 
Gabrielle had more than hinted when she first lifted the 
curtain for Juliette. His complexion was that pink 
pallor which no sitting up at cards could alter now, no 
buffeting of winter winds out hunting heighten ; his hair, 
cut rather short, still curled becomingly over his square 
forehead, and still was raven-black, except at the temples, 
where it grew now more sparsely. The one deep furrow 
on his brow gave a look of revery, and in his somewhat 
drooping eyelids seemed to dwell an undefined sadness. 
His eyes themselves were of that greenish-gray one often 
sees in men of power, and they had the penetration that 
commonly goes with it. A straight nose and a solidly 
rounded chin completed this slightly furrowed mask of a 
sinister Apollo : for the undue fulness of the lips was 
half-hidden beneath a mustache more nearly blond than 
brown. Casal’s was a face at once prematurely old and 
ridiculously young ; at one and the same time languid 
and energetic, sensual and metaphysical ; but there was 
one thing you could not say, that there was anything com- 
monplace in its expression. To sum up, Casal’s ensemble 
was at the same time powerful yet pretty, manly yet 
vaguely effeminate, and served to explain to Madame 
de Tilliere how it was that in a world of caprice and 
frivolity he had inspired so many with an almost tragic 
passion, and why so many men, including Henry de 
Poyanne, cherished a particular antipathy for him. 


22 


IVas It Love 7 


“ But I am sure he is not ^ like so many, ” was the stray 
blossom of thought Juliette newly watered, as, a quarter 
of an hour afterward, she stole a lightning glance at her 
new friend. Are you aware that a woman scarcely needs 
to look twice at you in order to tell “ what you are like,” 
and to the letter ? They know the color of your eyes 
and the quality of your teeth, the form of your hands and 
the sit of your hair, the meaning of your movements and 
the source of your gestures, the soundings of your humor 
and the amount of your education, long before you even 
guess that they have “ taken stock,” in fact, with, as the 
word goes, “ half an eye.” 

Dinner being announced, De Candolle offered Juliette 
his arm to pass into the dining-room ; and we may fitly 
give a short description of the guests. Gabrielle’s sister 
had been married to the Due d’Arcole — the latter had 
joined the majority. She was tall, lethargic, dark, not 
the least like Gabrielle. The Vicomte de Prosny was a 
descendant of a Napoleonic marshal ; Casal himself only 
the son of a railway king. Louis de Candolle, whose 
family had been a noble one for generations, had a pas- 
sion for la grande chasse” and, considerable as was his 
wife’s fortune, it was necessary for him, in order to satisfy 
this hereditary taste to the full, and entertain the best fam- 
ilies of France, to take into partnership, so to speak, certain 
chosen members from his club. It was thus that Alfred 
Mos^, the banker — Moses, had he lived two generations 
ago — was sitting at the rather exclusive table of Gabrielle 
de Candolle. Mose’s guiding thought was how to lead 
a fashionable life. Five years before, with unparalleled 
diplomatic efforts, he had succeeded in being pitch-forked 
into the Jockey Club, and was only too glad to be taken 


A New Friend. 


23 


up as an acquaintance by Louis de Candolle and his 
aristocratic wife, at the cost of heavy subscriptions to the 
Pont-sur-Yonne Hunt. Gabrielle was able to moderate 
the anti-Semitic spleen of certain guests by pointing 
out the admirable discretion and gentlemanly tone of 
Alfred Mos^, and his unquestionably practical benevo- 
lence. A fair, pale man of fifty, with perfect manners, 
Mos^ was a fine example of the Jewish force of character 
— which generally attains its end, whether the object be 
a milliqn or an invitation to some exclusive social func- 
tion. Monsieur d’Artelles, a faded fop of the era of the 
Third Napoleon, completed this little party. 

If any one had whispered Madame de Candolle that it 
was hardly the right or even correct thing to place her 
young friend next to Raymond at the table, she might have 
felt affronted ; and so might Juliette if the “ Diable Boi- 
teux ” of Le Sage and De Guevara had entered then and 
there with an insinuation that her feigned indifference for* 
her near neighbor, momentarily increasing, only cloaked 
an interest in him that waxed more vivid every instant. 

Prosny and D’Artelles were engaged in discussing the 
excellent Amontillado. Mose lisped graceful little noth- 
ings to Madame d’Arcole ; and the matter-of-fact master 
of the house consoled himself by a liberal enjoyment of 
the pleasures of his extremely well-kept table. 

The conversation naturally drifted to the carriage ac- 
cident of the morning ; and then, particularly as it was 
the dead season, the talk of the gentlemen ran to the 
most extraordinary sporting anecdotes that they could 
think of. 

“ Do you recollect, D’Artelles,” cried Prosny, “ that 
astonishing battue with the Grand Dukes at the Cross 


24 


IVas It Love ? 


Saint- Joseph ? How many birds do you reckon we killed 
that day ? ” 

“ Three thousand,” answered D’Artelles ; “ and I could 
have added another thirty per cent, easily, but I ran out 
of cartridges.” 

“ You gave your gun a needed rest, at any rate,” said 
Mos6. “ The other day La Mole laid up his ‘ Purdey ’ 
with hard work.” 

“ Ah ! there’s a shot for you. La M61e,” exclaimed 
De Candolle. 

“ How can you talk of La M61e — a very poor second- 
fiddle to Strabane ? ” cried Prosny. 

“ I wish you could have seen him,” insisted the host, 
“ kill six grouse on a bee-line, two on the rise, two more 
au coup de roi, and the other two behind his back.” 

^‘Farbleu ! ” smiled Mos6, “ Every morning of his life 
he used to exercise before a looking-glass, taking up three 
guns one after another from his man-servant without re- 
moving either for more than a fifth of a second from his 
shoulder.” 

“ Then,” cried D’Artelles, who with plebeian taste was 
in the habit of going off by himself into a corner to shoot, 
“ he must have had at least two men dangling at his heels 
in the field — and you call that sport t" 

Madame d’Arcole took in this conversation, a thousand 
times familiar to her, with the Italian phlegm she drew 
from her mother, whom she resembled as much as Gabri- 
elle was unlike her. Juliette complimented her friend 
on the magnificent flowers that flooded the table — huge 
nodding bunches of fresh white lilac, pink and yellow 
roses, orchids with their hearts of violet velvet lapt in a 
dainty robe of curious mauve. Round the great cut-glass 


A New Friend. 


25 


vases was ranged a miniature hedge of Russian violets, 
A hundred wax lights, shielded from the breeze of the 
half-open windows by shades of softest azure, illuminated 
the modish scene, lambent with snowy napery and the 
glow of silver figurines upholding the sumptuous bou- 
quets, whose supernal fragrance, mingling with the scent 
of rare wines, intoxicated the senses. To amalgamate 
all these things with effective artifice not only demanded 
wealth, but perfect taste ; and Gabrielle had both. 

As Juliette began her remarks about the loveliness of 
the white lilac and twining orchids, Casal lifted his eyes. 
His fair neighbor, by one of those coincidences that are 
so common when there have been spells of silence, took, 
as it were, the words out of his mouth, Casal set him- 
self to consider Juliette more attentively than since their 
presentation. 

It was soon clear to his practised eye that Madame de 
Tilliere’s mind was just then in a state of sustained agita- 
tion, He was enabled so to conclude from the brusquerie 
and bizarrerie of the ideas that she gave tongue to in her 
conversation with De Candolle and with Gabrielle ; as 
for himself, she never turned her face toward him. And 
this acute observer did not fail to note a certain trembling 
of the lips in Juliette, a certain quiver of the eyelids, as 
though she prayed her eyes might not betray the secrets 
of her brain. He came to two defined conclusions : the 
one, that behind this pretty screen of blond hair, azure 
eyes, and pink and white complexion, Madame de Til- 
li^re hid an explosive brilliancy of soul, and multitudinous 
longings no sooner framed than trampled under foot ; 
the second, that there was even then seated at table 
somebody in whom she was extremely interested. In a 


26 


PVas It Lovet 


minute more he had “ reckoned up ” these four men. 
Was it De Candolle, a “ nobody ” ? No. She spoke to 
him freely and gayly. . . . D’Artelles ? The Baron was 
on the “ down track ” years ago. . . . Prosny ? This big 
gourmand of a vicomte boasted long since that he was 
“ out of it.” Mos6 ? Hardly. Madame d’Arcole, with 
whom he was now engaged in a tete-a-tHe^ and whom he 
had been courting “ officially ” for months, had not once 
exchanged with Juliette one of those lightning flashes of 
defiance that jealous women, however circumspect in all 
else, by no possible grace ever spare their rivals. . . . 
Who was there left, except Casal himself t In spite of 
his successes — rather, perhaps, in virtue of them — Ray- 
mond was neither very vain nor very modest. He be- 
lieved, he knew, that he was capable of inspiring love, 
and at first sight. But he knew also that it was always 
on the cards that he might displease a woman to the verge 
of antipathy ; and he even admitted — which proves that 
he carried his good sense, for once, a little too far — that 
as yet she was scarcely conscious of more than his exist- 
ence. It all depended, he reflected, on the lady herself, 
and on the present condition of her heart. What crises, 
what fevers of affection had she passed through in life, 
and how many were yet to be suffered ? This was a kind 
of cross-examination upon which the teachings he had 
chanced on regarding the enchanting widow threw but 
little light. As, for instance : 

“ Madame de Tilliere is a charming woman, distin- 
guished, though of simple manners,” 

“Hang it, my good fellow, the relict of the late 
lamented T. is an intolerable 

Or again : “ There are, nevertheless, a few good women 


A New Friend. 


27 


in the world. For example, Madame de Tilli^re. Did 
you ever hear she had a ‘ follower ’ ? ” 

Or, “ Pshaw ! she is only one of those women who 
cover up their game better than the rest of them.” 

“If it is really I, Casal, that am upon her mind,” 
thought he, after these reflections, “ it is a fair fencing 
match, and I must watch my friend the enemy’s eye.” 

It was the wisest thing, because no doubt Madame de 
Tilliere had heard him severely handled by the common 
tongue. He knew too well exactly how he stood to 
doubt it. Let him, then, take a back seat for the time, 
and play a waiting game of tact and fine discretion — that 
was his instinct, as of most men who succeed in interest- 
ing many women. He continued this play of self-efface- 
ment, denying himself his customary airs of enfant gdti ; 
posing as a listener rather than a talker, and holding 
himself in reserve like a secretary of embassy of the old 
school. He had not long to wait for the fruits of this 
abstention. Juliette, who of her own free will had joined 
this party in order to study the man who was now sitting 
at her side, was beginning to fear that dinner would be 
over without her having had a chance to find out what 
there was behind this physiognomy that so strongly mag- 
netized her. It was Juliette who suddenly turned to her 
neighbor, and asked a question calculated to make him 
enter into conversation. 

“ You can believe me or not, as you like,” Prosny was 
just saying, already heated by champagne and sherry, and 
giving forth his quotum of incredible anecdotes, “but I 
knew a fellow in Normandy that would bag his twenty 
brace a day without fingers, hands, or arms. Yes, gen- 
tlemen ! his youngest son used to load his gun for him. 


28 


Was It Lovet 


place his father on a stile, or on a stock or mile-stone, 
and the dear old boy blazed away with his toes. And 
hardly ever missed a bird ! ” 

The entire party went out on strike against this par- 
tridge story, and Prosny was emphasizing its truth with 
his fat fore-finger, when Juliette turned to Casal, and 
said : 

“You, too, monsieur, have you no eccentric histories 
of sport to cap the recitations of these worthy gentle- 
men ? ” 

“ If I have not, madame,” he answered, smiling, “ the 
reason is that there are only a certain number of sporting 
stories in the French language, atid they have all been 
told ! All the same, I'wasn’t acquainted with the conun- 
drum Prosny has just given us ; and I must say it is a 
long way ahead of the rest. But one must have a little 
charity for hunting stories, when we think that the love 
of sport represents the sane and wholesome side of our 
complicated and artificial lives.” 

“ I declare I am not exactly able to see,” answered 
Juliette, “where the sanity and wholespmeness comes in 
of a man posting himself behind a hedge for six or seven 
hours at a stretch, to let off a couple of ounces of cold 
lead every now and again at an unhappy hare or harmless 
pheasant, which the keepers have been seat-ting at you 
all the morning ! ” 

“ Oh, that sort of hunting,” laughed Casal, “ does well 
enough for a beginning. One pursues the higher branches, 
which require more skill, afterward ; and I have seen 
some of my friends — not many — begin by shooting rab- 
bits and get as high as tiger-potting in India, buffalo- 
bagging in the Western States, or hippopotamus-hunting 


A New Friend. 


29 


in Central Africa. Will you believe me, madame, that 
three of my particular friends had the hardihood to go 
a-hunting, id has on the frontiers of Turkestan, a certain 
unique animal described by Marco Polo, called the Ovis 
Polls, and they found and bagged him.” 

“ Have you been on any of these grand hunts ? ” asked 
Juliette. 

“ One or two,” said Casal. “ The easiest : of course, 
to India, where I killed my half-dozen man-eaters, along 
with the rest of the world. Of that voyage I have the 
pleasantest memories. When a fellow has seen a thou- 
sand dawns from the attic windows of his club-house, it 
is a magnificent sensation, just for once, to see the sun- 
rise, seated in a howdah swaying on a monstrous elephant, 
to cross one of those tremendous rivers that run illumi- 
nated blood beneath the rosy glare of the tropics. With 
a little too much danger to be going on with, I do not 
say that the thing wouldn’t grow stale in time ; but while 
the froth is on, it is a genuine sensation. I can tell you 
that after that sort of thing club and society life seem 
sufficiently tame for,, a long while.” 

“ But why do you lead it } ” asked Madame de Tilli^re. 
The charming terror that the evidence of personal cour- 
age in a man causes a woman to feel was so pronounced 
in Juliette during this speech of Casal’s that for an in- 
stant she relaxed the watch upon her words. Her own 
exclamation astounded her ; it made her blush. She 
thought it altogether too familiar, and feared that he 
would take advantage of it, if only in order to familiarize 
himself in turn with her. He was polite enough to an- 
swer, shaking his head with a sort of sad bonhomie : • 

“ It is the story of a woman who has married ill, 


3 ° 


Was It Love 2 


roadame. I threw the dice and turned up aces. A 
young man begins to amuse himself — or we all think it is 
amusement at the time — at twenty, because he is twenty, 
and he continues it at fifty, because he’s fifty. It makes 
of a man a fly upon the world’s great wheel, a stow’- 
away on the ocean voyage of life. . . . But when he 
knoijvs it. . . . ” 

He laughed as he failed to finish the sentence, a boy’s 
boisterous and rollicking laugh, a trick that he had never 
forgotten, one of his attractions. It was rather a good 
joke for a man like Casal, wealthy, flattered by every- 
body, absolutely free, conspicuously happy, to pretend 
that he had missed his vocation and made a mess of life. 
But his very laughter masked the mockery, and the irony 
of such a situation was not so perceptible to Juliette as it 
would have been to a man of the world. 

There was a silence now between these two. 

Dinner was nearly over, and the time was at hand when 
the excitement of talk and an uncertain number of glasses 
of excellent wine usually bring in their wake something 
more or less outrageous, in the way of a remark or train 
of thought, from the least judicious member of a dinner- 
party. The Baron d’Artelles took upon himself to talk 
about Madame de Corcieux, who, as everybody present 
knew, had indulged in a flirtation with Casal. It was 
nothing very risky that he was saying, but sufficiently so 
to place the young man in a rather embarrassing posi- 
tion, 

“ What in the name of fate,” he was giving tongue to, 
“ possessed poor Pauline to come out as a blonde I Has 
she no friend to tell her that it makes her look ten good 
years older ? And she is getting to be of such a ‘youth,’ 


A Neiv Friend. 


31 


as the American calls it, that she no longer requires an 
addition of ten to her birthdays, or even five I ” 

“ It reminds me of old Bonnivet, whom you have often 
seen, madame,” interposed the crafty and politic Mose, 
to turn the conversation, addressing Gabrielle ; “ you 
know he used to dye his hair ? ” 

“ You mean you know he was enamelled ? ” put in De 
Candolle, with a tipsy laugh. 

“ In short,” went on the banker, “whether he used to 
dye or enamel, or what not, he used to hide it from the 
world ; but he could not hide it from his barber, who 
said to me one day with a grin : ‘ If I only dared to speak 
to him about it, I would tell him that I could do it a 
great deal better for him.’ To cut the story, our Bon- 
nivet fell ill. Rheumatism racked his every limb, I 
went to see him, and his hair was the color of snow. 
Guess what his greeting was, ladies ! ‘You see what 
I have suffered, Mose; it has turned my hair quite 
white ! ’ ” 

“ That did not prevent Madame de Corcieux,” went on 
D’Artelles, who was fond of hearing the music of his own 
voice, “ from ‘ trying it on,’ Let’s see. How old is she, 
about ? I say, Cdi%a\, you ought to know how old she is,” 
These words were no sooner pronounced than the im- 
prudent man felt that he had committed a verbal faux 
pas s and, cutting himself short, he grew very red in the 
face, while all the party held their peace, which made 
Casal the more conspicuous. He could neither attack 
nor defend his former friend. He took a middle course, 
and said, innocently : 

“ Madame de Corcieux ? Well, when I saluted her at 
the Opera the other day she was just as old as very pretty 


32 


IVas It Lovet 


women usually are, who happen to be over five and 
twenty ; and Bonnivet, ancient peer of France as he is, 
was reclining in his fauteuil^ a very old and very broken 
man, in spite of his brave way of saying, with his best 
Faubourg St, Germain grace : ‘ There is no such thing, 
my dear fellow, as Age, no such thing. It is simply a 
^question of Vitality ! ’ ” 

Everybody laughed with real enjoyment at this exceed- 
ingly neat way of turning the tables on the injudicious 
D’Artelles. Casal, who felt that he had really pleased his 
new friend and neighbor, now took care that the con- 
versation should become more general, by relating pleas- 
antly a few anecdotes of his adventures in Japan. He 
found means to show himself so genially spiriiuel that, 
as the ladies were leaving the table, Gabrielle approached 
Casal and whispered him : 

‘‘You have set the ball nicely rolling, and, take my 
word for it, have pleased \iQr. Now smoke in peace — but 
I forgot, you hardly ever smoke. But you may sip your 
eau-de-vie with a good conscience ; and mind, come to us 
soon." 

The young man smiled and bowed, as he held the door 
open for his hostess. But when, an hour later, his com- 
panions returned from the smoking-room, Madame de 
Candolle looked in vain for the manly but graceful fig- 
ure of her protigl. He was a sufficiently old hand in the 
mysteries of flirtation to disappear on his success. She 
looked at Juliette, who also had remarked the flight. 
Not aware that she was observed, there was an unmistak- 
able frown on her brow. When Madame de Tilliere's 
carriage was announced at a quarter to ten, that little 
signal of distress was still hanging out ; and the Countess’s 


A New Friend. 


33 


teasing query as she kissed her good-night was not cal- 
culated to soothe her nerves : 

“ I hope you have not been too awfully, awfully bored. 
You must allow that ‘ our Casal ’ is not so horrid as his 
reputation — quite. ” 

“ But he hasn’t,” laughed Juliette, with some constraint 
— “he hasn’t sat long enough in the dock for a legal 
trial.” 

“True, all the same, my lady,” said Gabrielle to her- 
self when her friend was gone, “ that you are ‘ struck! 
Did he not make a mistake in taking himself off ? ” 

In which assumption, delicately just as her judgments 
usually were, she was herself mistaken ; for, rolling home 
in her brougham to the Rue .Matignon, Juliette’s best 
thoughts were for the man who had disappeared, and it 
was with a painful start that she received the footman’s 
intimation as he took her opera cloak : 

“ Monsieur le Comte de Poyanne is in the drawing- 
room, awaiting miladi.” . . . 

She had forgotten his existence. 

3 




III. 

OLD FRIENDS ARE DEAR. 

“ ’Tis sweet to think there is an eye will mark 
Our coming — and grow brighter when we come.” 

— Byron. 

Juliette loved nothing better, as a rule, than a long, 
long talk by the cosey ingle-side at such a witching hour 
of a winter night. This peculiar taste of hers was so 
well known that she received not only her suitor. Mon- 
sieur de Poyanne, at such a time, but also her other faith- 
ful intimates, such as Mirant, D’Avangon, De Jardes, and 
Accragne. The multiplicity of these visits put a stop to 
any tattle on the part of the servants. This clever woman 
divined what a charm there was, in the mid press and 
muddle of our turbulent Paris life, for a favored mortal 
to know a certain saloon, where at fixed hours he would 
be able to see a young and elegant woman who would 
listen gently to his passing thoughts, in turn consoling or 
consulting, having apparently (no sweeter object in life 
than these semi-celestial moments of innocent though 
quasi-clandestine tete-a-tHe.^ It pleased her to envelope 
those in whom she interested herself with a halo of intel- 
ligence. Affection doubled these delicate pleasures in 


Old Friends are Dear. 


35 


the case of De Poyanne. How many evenings had they 
thus passed in friendship before he declared his love to 
her — listening intentively and indefinitely to the long 
story of the trials and discomfitures of his existence. 
He used to tell her of his melancholy boyhood in the 
shadowy old Hotel Poyanne, at Besangon ; of his dead 
mother ; of the harsh severity of the injudicious father 
that made his youth an earthly purgatory. Of his mar- 
riage he told Juliette exhaustively, his marriage with a 
lovely girl long known ; of their brief happiness, of the 
first jealousies, of his shame at her defection ; then of 
her treason — and what a terrible treason ! — with the friend 
of his manhood, who had been altogether dear to him. 
Then of the duel between the two men who had been 
so recently as brothers, a duel in which both were se- 
verely wounded. Then of the flight of Madame de Poy- 
anne, since which day he had never set his eyes upon 
the woman that had been and was his wife. For this 
old-fashioned orator believed in the divine nature of 
marriage as well as in the divine right of kings, and noth- 
ing could tempt him into the divorce court, not even 
the imperilment of his chance of earthly happiness. And 
then of his despair. Then of his return to energy and 
life and duty ; and of the campaign of 1870, when he was 
captain of artillery. Then of his entrance to the world 
political, and of his progress as a speaker in the Assem- 
blies of Bordeaux and Versailles. And when pity had 
been superseded by mutual affection, when Juliette had 
become the promised bride of this unhappy man, who, 
like her mother, seemed to have had a superfluity of suffer- 
ing, how many an evening had they passed together, when 
she listened with the complaisance of love to the inter- 


36 


Was It Love! 


minable account of the daily labor of this enthusiastic 
orator, giving back to him his lost faith in himself when 
his fatigues seemed too heavy to be borne, throwing the 
light of her scintillant judgment on some vexed point of 
policy, admiring him always with exceeding animation, 
when he displayed for her, and for her alone, his vast 
reserves of argument in favor of the great conservative 
cause ; and all this without crossing the pale of woman- 
liness, and with a delicate and caressing way of listening 
which excluded the suspicion of mere patronage on her 
part. 

In accordance with her complex nature, when Juliette 
realized that the announcement of Poyanne’s presence was 
an almost painful awakening to her, she set this feeling 
down to the account of having probably caused Henry 
more or less pain in putting off their appointment of the 
evening ; all the more so when she recognized the 
Count’s valet waiting in the antechamber. To her in- 
quiry he answered : 

“ I am waiting, madame, for the proofs of the speech 
that monsieur delivered, to carry them to the newspaper 
office.” 

“ I remember, he told me,” said Juliette to herself ; 
“ he will want to know why I am home so late. It is not 
like me to show so little interest in him and his affairs.” 

In cold truth, Poyanne’s visit was disagreeable to her 
because it cut short her revery on the events of the even- 
ing, and prevented her from thinking freely of Casal. 
Such was the depth of impression that singular man had 
made upon her mental retina already. But how could she 
admit this to herself as the cause of her annoyance, when 


Old Friends are Dear. 


37 


she was so certain that her heart was Henry de Poyanne's 
for life ? This persuasion of hers served to gild her 
errors of emotion, if errors there had been, in her tete- 
h-tete with Casal, and in subsequent reflections on him. 
Ah ! how we delude, or try to delude, our consciences, 
day by day, year in and year out, as to the real nature of 
our thoughts, our secret springs of sentiment ! 

Juliette would shortly have to acknowledge to herself, 
in the awakening of an hour, that the illusion was no 
longer tenable — indeed, that very evening. 

“You are angry with me, dear ? ” she' cried, on enter- 
ing the little Louis XVI. boudoir, now even more invit- 
ing and elegant than by the soft April sunlight, under 
the mingled rays of fire and lamp. The count was seated 
at the very escritoire on which she had written him the 
letter of the afternoon. As soon as she came in, he rose 
with a lover’s haste and kissed her hand ; then, showing 
her the pile of proofs that encumbered her little desk, he 
exclaimed : 

“ Angry ? As if I could be, even if I had the time, 
which, as you see ” — pointing to the papers — “ I have not. 
I was hard at work while waiting for you, for taking 
which liberty I hope you will forgive me. We got away 
from the sitting so very late, and I had all these proofs 
to correct for the Journal Officiel. I told my man to 
bring them to me here, and I am so glad,” added he, with 
the gayety of one who has finished a heavy task, “ that 
they are very nearly ready ; you will excuse me ? ” 

Reseating himself, De Poyanne finished his marginal 
hieroglyphics ; then, picking up the scattered sheets in 
both hands, he folded them in a large envelope already 
addressed, and hurriedly went out to give them himself 


38 


IVas It Love^ 


to the patient valet in the hall. All this did not take 
more than ten minutes. 

And now why did Juliette, who in her nervousness 
dreaded that she had caused her lover pain and annoy- 
ance, find herself chagrined when she realized the utter 
calm and kindness of his reception ? Certainly, the fault 
she had committed in feeling all the evening so much 
interested in Casal and in his company, even to the 
temporary oblivion of Poyanne — all this in the order of 
every-day happenings was forgivable. In the order of 
matters of the heart, it was not, however, quite so venial. 
Although these things only flashed through Juliette’s 
mind as through a glass, darkly, she had hoped that 
Henry, by exhibiting some slight degree of temper, would 
have balanced her own remissness, and thus permitted 
her to “ make it up to him ” by those little wheedling ways 
of grace a woman loves to put in force when “ anything 
has happened.” The absolute contrast between the 
tumult of her own feelings and the Count’s tranquillity 
gave her a sort of shock. It seemed as if Henry’s love 
was not of the same quality that night as heretofore. 

Singular danger signal and ominous mirage of dwind- 
ling love, of whose defection we are yet ignorant, when 
we reproach those whom we ourselves love less with not 
being so affectionate as they were ! And to think that 
we are able to pass this counterfeit excuse upon ourselves 
in all good faith ! 

Never, in the many months they had known each 
other, had Juliette felt this sensation of something dead 
or dying in her heart toward Henry de Poyanne. She ap- 
proached the mantel, as the count was engaged in putting 
the last artistic touches to the proofs of his recent speech. 


Old Friends are Dear, 


39 


and with one little satin slipper on the fender, scrutinized 
her lover’s face in the looking-glass. Why did the image 
of another seem to interpose itself suddenly between 
Henry and herself, even to the blotting out of the dear 
friend who was sitting in the self-same room ? Why, by 
the lightnings of her stormy vision, did she behold the 
reflection of the man with whom she had sat down to 
dinner, the face, as Gabrielle called him, of “ handsome 
Casal ” ? The man himself, as he stood before her when 
she passed out of the dining-room, with his supple yet 
powerful gestures, his manly but tired look — all were in 
that looking-glass, instead of Henry de Poyanne. 

When this ill-boding mental photograph faded away in 
the high light of reality, she was able quietly once more 
to look upon the likeness of the man with whom, of her 
own free will, she had exchanged vows of durable affec- 
tion — not yesterday, which might have made her forget- 
fulness excusable, but months and years ago. Instantly, 
and in virtue of the startling contrast between these two 
men, Henry appeared in her eyes so av/kward, so wretch- 
edly mean. She turned away and sighed. Count Henry 
de Poyanne, at that time forty-five years of age, was a 
tall, spare man, not very strong temperamentally ; and the 
sorrows of his youth, the trials of his marriage, together 
with the cares of parliamentary life, had still further 
eaten into his constitutional reserves. His shoulders 
stooped through so much desk work, his brown hair was 
plentifully(^sprinkled with the icicles of years,Jand did not 
grow so thick as formerly. His complexion was some- 
what clouded with those bistre tints that betray impover- 
ished blood and the enervation of an ever-sedentary life. 
Even so, there was an ineradicable seal of lofty birth on 


40 


Was It Love ? 


his features and his bearing. His flashing blue eyes, the 
haughty curve of his lips, and a certain magnanimity of 
bearing, made him still a handsome man. There was a 
reserve of power in the Count that had distinguished him 
since boyhood, and enabled him to face the world and 
all its v/oes with almost undiminished nerve. He had 
much warmth of sentiment, profound fidelity and faith, 
and an unconquerable will. A woman could only have 
given her heart to this man in virtue of its best and 
highest sentiments, or through the enthusiasm due to 
eloquence, or on account of a passionate desire to heal 
his wounded happiness. In point of fact, it was all these 
motives in conjunction that had determined Juliette’s love. 

But the danger in these leanings of the heart to the 
romantic, where a woman has allowed her feelings to be 
overcome by intellectual admiration or sentimental pity, 
is that an hour may come when this very admiration will 
evaporate through too much cherishing its object, the 
pity vanish with too great satisfaction. 

Juliette was beginning, to her shame and sorrow, to 
realize these metaphysical truths. Had she mistaken the 
real nature of her own sentiments, and found her error 
out, too late ? 

Happy the woman in whom this revulsion occurs with- 
out external motive, and not by the cruel process of the 
image of another intercepting the features dear to her by 
duty ! Happy the woman to whom the awakening comes 
as opportune, and not in the guise of a most painful and 
most compromising disenchantment ! 

“You have been terribly hard at work; I will make a 
little punch for you,” said Juliette, turning to the Count 
with her pleasantest smile. 



I WILL MAKE A l.HTLE HUNCH FOR YOU SAID JULIETTE, 





Old Friends are Dear. 


41 


“ If )'0U will be so very kind ! ” cried Poyanne at 
Juliette’s offer. And, in his turn, he began to scrutinize 
his promised wife, as with her own dainty fingers she set 
about putting the necessary lumps of sugar into the tum- 
bler, with water from a silver kettle. In evening dress 
still, Juliette looked, amidst her own placid surroundings, 
more adorable than ever — more than ever, with her pale- 
gold hair and ethereal expression, like the portrait of her 
ancestress. As the rose tints of Juliette’s robe shimmered 
from beneath its trellis-v/ork of priceless lace, and her 
bare arms glowed in the harmonious lights from hearth 
and lamp, type of tender womanhood it would be sacri- 
lege to call voluptuous, the Count sprang forward and ex- 
claimed, as though the words were forced from him by the 
intensity of his admiration : 

“How beautiful you are to-night, my darling! and 
what a glorious thing for me to have you here ! ” 

Saying this, he bent over Juliette to kiss her, but she turned 
away her head with a gesture of impatience, and cried : 

“ Take care, take care, you are so awkward ; you will 
make me spill the spirit.” 

Just then she was engaged in pouring a tablespoonful 
of eau-de-vie into the tumbler as the Count bent over her 
chair, intending to take her in his arms. Her words them- 
selves were nothing, and there was only the charming 
mutiny of coquetry, perhaps, in the quick movement by 
means of which she glided from his proffered endearment 
and allowed his warm lips to waste themselves upon her 
silken hair. Nevertheless, it made him draw away, a prey 
to cruel impressions, the feelings of a suitor when his 
well-beloved for the first time refuses to let her heart- 
strings thrill in unison with his own. 


42 


F/as It Lovil 


Yes, this little gesture of retreat was a simple nothing. 
But when these graceful rebuffs are multiplied a hundred 
times, a lover falls into a state of fear, the fear that is so 
hard to bear — that he not only now no longer pleases, but 
displeases — an inward terror that congeals the heart and 
freezes the very words of love upon one’s lips. 

In this lay the danger of misunderstanding that was 
destined to more and more estrange these gentle hearts. 
Without taking thought, and instinctively yielding to this 
sentiment of waning tenderness that almost now appeared 
to her the tendency of weeks instead of hours, Juliette had 
refused a caress from the very man whom, in her soul, 
she was accusing of diminished love. She busied herself 
in the preparation of the promised punch, pounding the 
dissolving sugar into atoms against the sides of the glass, 
and finally, with a smile, putting her own lips to it to see 
if it was sweet enough. 

“ Why, now,” she exclaimed, with a glance of reproach, 
“ it is too strong. I told you you would make me spoil 
it, and I must make another. ” 

“ Let me help you to mix it,” said he, making as though 
to take her arm. 

“This time, I order you to sit still,” said Juliette, again 
drawing away, “ and don’t disturb me in my household 
duties any more.” 

“ I obey ! ” he exclaimed, and v/ith his elbows on the 
marble mantelpiece, he looked at her again, without her 
paying any more attention to his lover’s gaze than he had 
to her self-analysis in the same mirror a little while before. 
He thought, even now, that when Juliette turned away 
her face from his proffered caress it was but a little child- 
ish bit of teasing by-play. All the same, this little harm- 


Old Friends are Dear. 


43 


less bit of by-play was destined to seal his lips that night 
from speaking out a certain something that was on his 
mind. Letters received that very morning had apprised 
him that his presence was required in Les Doubs by a 
double election to the Conseil General. It was a question 
of carrying off two seats from his political adversaries, 
in favor of men who, if helped by his eloquence, would 
no doubt succeed ; and he took his position as Leader of 
the Right altogether too seriously to be remiss in such a 
business, which to him spelt duty. He had come to the 
Rue Matignon with the object of asking Madame de 
Tilliere for an interview to say good-by before he went 
away ; and now, after that little gesture of hers, he felt 
himself incapable of making known his wish. This pas- 
sionate timidity, even amid surroundings which seemed 
to charm away all fear and all exclusiveness, would, no 
doubt, have made an ordinary lover smile. For instance, 
Casal, if anybody had come to him and detailed to him 
this tete-h-teie ! It is, notwithstanding, a sufficiently com- 
mon phenomenon amongst lovers to merit a moment’s 
analysis. 

Certain men, Poyanne of the number, pure-minded from 
their boyhood upward, and in their manhood cruelly 
betrayed, as the years go on allow a thundercloud of 
self-distrust to gather over them. And this sense of 
being ill at ease with themselves makes them exhibit in 
their love-affairs a delicacy which would be less out of 
place in womankind. In their case affection is haunted 
by anxiety, and the very freedom of intercourse which 
would draw out other men serves but to lock them up 
the more securely in their voluntary prison. Nothing 
could appear more unintelligible to a man of the world. 



44 


IVas It Love 7 


But is it feasible to formulate the palpitating shadows 
of the heart ? A lover’s complaint is often founded on 
his own baseless fancy ; and Juliette, in this case, mer- 
ited no reproach, because she did not understand the 
regrets that she was raising, all the more vivid in this 
loyal heart because it was by no means the first time that 
Poyanne had asked himself if he was worthy of the love 
of this uniquely tender woman. 

But even had he been waiting to complain, it would 
have been hard to find an opportunity, when Juliette 
came toward him with a dimpling face of pleasure' for 
his satisfaction, to hand him his steaming punch, this 
time prepared to admiration. 

“ And now," she exclaimed, “ I believe the liquid will 
be to your taste. My poor Henry looks tired to death. 
I am certain you have been working too hard in that 
horrid chamber. Why was it you decided to make a 
speech, when you said you would not, dear ? ” 

“ Oh, thank you,” said the Count, sipping, and then 
setting the glass on the mantel. “ ‘ What decided me to 
make a speech ? ’ 

“The thing that decided me to speak,” he repeated, 
“ was this same party egotism I have so often told you 
about, directed at the efforts of the Pdght. Never will I 
let it pass without a word of protest, in any French 
assembly I belong to, monarchist or Christian, republican 
or what not, that we, because we have the sense and 
honor to be ranged upon the Right, have no longer any- 
thing in common with the misfortunes and the miseries 
of the People ! . . . De Sauve had interpellated the 
minister about that strike in the North, and the meas- 
ures of repression that had been taken in consequence. 


Old Friends are Dear. 


45 


A speaker of the majority replied, with all the hackneyed 
phrases you can guess, deriding the old rdgime, as if the 
progress of our own day, where there is improvement, 
would not have been brought about by the forces of years, 
without the butcheries of the Revolution, without the can- 
nonading of the Third Napoleon, without the torches of 
the pdtroleuses ! 

“ But you know my ideas so well, and you can guess, 
dear Juliette, what I said. I clinched my thoughts 
amidst the groans of the Left — who were livid with anger 
at the logicality of what I put to them — and the accla- 
mations of our friends. . . . But to what end ? Ah ! 
the authors of these days, who make it their business to 
analyze the pains and penalties of modern life, have 
failed to write up the heart-sickness of the orator who 
flings himself into the arena for a doctrine which he 
believes in with his heart of hearts, his soul of souls, 
whom his partisans applaud, as though he were an actor 
or a virtuoso, but who has the awful knowledge that his 
words will entrain no single action! -From Left to Right, 
our whole political life of to-day is a series of shifting 
combinations of misanthropic cliques, dissatisfied cabals 
— and, in the mean time, France is being ruined. I told 
them that, and told it them twice over — oh ! but all in 
vain, m vain /” . . . 

He came and went, taking up and retaking this sub- 
ject, all too grave, almost, for Parliament, a reflex of so 
many bootless sittings there have been since the war, 
mere bellowings of wind-philosophy. 

Juliette knew that this moving voice and accent of her 
lover lied not. She knew with what strength of convic- 
tion Poyanne had embraced a cause on which the future 


46 


H'^as It Love^ 


only can pronounce a just judgment ; she knew of his 
unconquerable hope that he might yet reknit these two 
torn halves of our great country — the great botch-work 
of the nineteenth century, placed, as we are, between tra- 
ditional monarchy on the one hand, and the crude theory 
upon the other that the mob is king ! She had been pow- 
erfully and long interested in these dreams of a statesman 
whom she knew to be sincere, guessed to be misunder- 
stood, and hoped would yet be honored and successful. 
Still, she was “ only a woman,” and on this very day 
when, in her estimation, her lover’s ardor had begun to 
cool, so her admiration for these lofty ideals appeared 
not quite so real and warm as yesterday. 

Whoever lives a great deal in the realm of thought, no 
matter whether painter or man of science, leader of a 
political party or author, has at hand an infallible touch- 
stone whereby to test the affection of the woman for whom 
he cares, wife or sweetheart, or only sister. On the day, 
in the hour, when she no longer accords him that passion- 
ate attention of the intellect which is a vital necessity for 
the artisan of thought, that very day, that very hour, she 
has withdrawn the admiration of her heart, and will vainly 
try to make up for its absence by lip-service and perfunc- 
tory attendance. This was the case between these two, 
as now it stood, when Henry de Poyanne concluded his 
tirade. 

“ All that is exceedingly true and very fine,” said Juli- 
ette, “ but in the mean time will you not be kind enough 
to think a little bit of me ? ” 

“ To think a little bit of you! ” replied Henry, with a 
look of sad surprise. “ And for whom is it that I pray 
ray name may yet become illustrious ? At whose feet 


Old Friends are Dear. 


47 


have I leamt the fortitude to carry me through so many 
public disillusions ?” 

“Ah ! ” said she, prettily shaking her fair locks, “ you 
know how to frame soft answers. But do you wish me 
to prove to you how very little and how very seldom 
you have thought this day of me I ” 

“You know,” said Poyanne with a smile — “you know 
very well that you wrote me you would dine with 
Gabrielle ? ” 

“She was not the only one at dinner,” put in Juliette, 
the prey of that evil spirit of curiosity that has prompted 
the best of women before now to tempt the jealousy of 
man by talking to them of a second. 

“ She is not angry with me,” asked the Count, “ because 
I am in arrears with my visiting cards ? ” without noticing 
Juliette’s frivolous interposition. 

“Not the least in the world.” And then, in an indiffer- 
ent tone : “ I sat at dinner next to a man I know you do 
not care for.” 

“ And who might that have been ? ” asked De Poyanne 
at last. 

“ Monsieur Casal,” answered Juliette, regarding his 
face with the utmost attention in order to see the effect 
on the Count of the name of his old enemy. 

“ How can Madame de Candolle countenance such an 
acquaintance ?' ” said Poyanne, in a tone of indignation 
that at once amused and annoyed Juliette. Juliette 
smiled, she could not help it, because Henry’s question 
was nearly word for word the phrase that Gabrielle had 
prophesied that he would use when he got to know that 
Casal had been her guest. And she frowned because this 
disdain and hatred on Henry’s part was the cruellest pos- 


48 


IVas It Lovet 


sible critique on the impression that Casal had made on 
her. And the Count insisted : 

“ No doubt it was hep husband who foisted his society 
on Madame de Candolle. He and Casal together make 
a pretty pair. The last, however, with his mixed life of 
gambler and libertine, does not dishonor one of the his- 
toric families of France.” 

“But, I must tell you,” said Juliette — “ I must tell you 
that I had a very jolly talk with him.” 

“ What about ? ” asked the Count. “ He must have 
sloughed the adder’s skin very recently if you managed 
to get anything out of him not pertaining to the gaming- 
table or the race-course. I have heard him chatter- 
ing too often at the Corcieux’ and one or two other 
houses.” 

“She loved him, then, very dearly?” asked Juliette. 

“ She loved him insanely,” answered the Count, with the 
marked hostility he never failed to show when any infrac- 
tion of the family tie was alluded to in his presence. “ It 
was always a horrible mystery to me how such a charm- 
ing woman could care for such a vulgar snob, with his in- 
famous air of boredom at being made so much of ! And 
with a husband wise, distinguished, rich, and kind, who 
adored her, and adores her still ! I have ceased to visit 
them, knowing what I do. I have suffered too much for 
poor Corcieux, and for her. Poor Pauline ! She has been 
well rewarded. Casal is an infamous brute, with a heart 
and hand as chilly as the nether millstone.” 

“ Nevertheless he spoke of her this evening with the 
greatest tact,” persisted Juliette. 

“ Does he dare to frame her name ? ” responded De 
Poyanne. 


Old Friends are Dear. 


49 


There fell a silence then between the two lovers. 
Madame de Tilliere, for her part, regretted too late hav- 
ing even mentioned her neighbor at the De Candolles’, 
She had toyed with Henry’s jealousy, and was fearful 
now that she had roused it. She was too profoundly 
sensitive not to regret having inflicted pain upon one she 
had long imagined held the keys of her heart ; who even 
now possessed, and always would, her entire esteem. 

The clock struck midnight. 

“Well,” said Henry, “I must bid my Juliette good- 
night. When shall I see her again ? ” 

“Whenever you like,” smiled Juliette. “Will you 
come to dinner to-morrow ? There will be only mother 
and Sophie de Nan9ay.” 

“ I should like it very much,” said De Poyanne. And 
then, in a moved voice : 

“You are aware I have to leave to-morrow, and that I 
may be gone for four or five weeks ? ” 

“ No,” said Juliette ; “ you never breathed a word of 
it.” ' 

“ There are two elections on, for the Conseil General, 
and they have sent for me,” 

“Always these horrid politics,” said Juliette, smiling. 

He regarded her once more with a look that she did 
not read, refused to read — a wish that the lips of this 
timid lover declined to speak aloud, 

“ Adieu ! ” said he, in tones of still greater emotion. 

“ A demain ! ” exclaimed Juliette. “ A quarter to seven, 
but come a little earlier.” 

When the door had closed behind Heni^, she re- 
mained motionless for many minutes, staring into the 
same mirror that had so lately shown her the likeness 
4 


50 


Was It Love 7 


of her lover. Why did the image of Raymond Casal 
once more stand between these lately happy spirits ? and 
with what mental monster was she wrestling when she said 
aloud, before retiring for the* night : 

“ Do I no longer love Henry de Poyanne ? ” 




IV. 


A CASAL IN LOVE. 

** O love ! why play with me ? 

Thou art the riddle of all the ages. 

Love, Love ! oh, set me free — 

Let me alone, and let me fo : 

Lift thy magneiic eyes from mine ! 

Let some other way be thine.” 

— Song: Pilgrim of Passion'* 

Whilst Juliette was in vain trying to sleep over this 
perplexing question in her little cot — the bed she had 
so often lain on as a girl, which, with all the rest of her 
maiden belongings, it. had been her pleasure to resume as 
a widow, gentle mementos of her only happy days ; whilst 
Poyanne was tramping his way to his lonely lodging in 
the Rue Matignac, reproaching himself that he no longer 
seemed to please his sweetheart, how was that third per- 
son, whose sudden apparition between these two meant 
disquietude, if not unhappiness, perhaps, for one, and 
moral misery for the other, engaged — Raymond Casal, so 
differently weighed in the balance by women and by men ? 
Did he imagine at that moment that his beautiful neigh- 
bor of the hunting-dinner, instead of sleeping, was even 
then busily engaged in thinking of him, asking herself a 
thousand questions about his personality, his soul, while 


52 


IVas It Lovel 


all the time resolving to expel him from her mind ? In 
love herself, as by herself supposed to be, what right had 
she to give her thoughts up to another, even for half an 
hour, when, for the time, her mental wool-gathering could 
not hurt Poyanne ? 

Casal had turned his back on the De Candolles per- 
suaded that he had succeeded in attracting Madame de 
Tilli^re — in fact, had gone away so soon in order not to 
deaden the impression he was sure he had made. But 
the first thing he did when he once more found himself 
in the Rue Tilsitt, warmly wrapped in his heavy cloak, 
as he inhaled the fresh night air, and gazed on the 
starry sky, was not to retrace the delicate profile of the 
Widow de Tilli^re on his mind’s eye. Only later on was 
he to find out how deeply he was touched. This Casal, 
man of Modern Paris, was in habit of reflecting deeply ; 
but, after all, he did not know his own soul. Who 
knows himself entirely ? Who can say. To-morrow I will 
be wanton or I will be sad ; tender or jealous ? Blasd 
with the thousand and one enjoyments that delight the 
gilded youth of the day — similar, no doubt, in kind in 
every great centre of civilization at every epoch — steeped 
in sensuous satisfaction, haughty as the tiger of the night, 
free as the eagle of the mountain-top, with two hundred 
and fifty thousand francs a year to lay out on nothing 
more costly than his particular gratification, Casal had 
perhaps a right to think himself both above and beyond 
the capacity of romance. His joyous boyish laugh (a 
trait that revealed him at his best) showed that, after all, 
in circumstances of less splendor, he would not have 
been a man whose heart was ungetatable. 

Casal, deprived of both parents at an early age, always 


A Casal in Love. 


53 


in hot water with his guardians, accustomed from boy- 
hood to absolute independence, seemed to have remained 
a bachelor — just as he was tall and strong and healthy — 
“because he was built that way.” One could scarcely 
imagine him on his knees pouring out his soul to an imi- 
tation angel of eighteen in a white frock with a blue sash, 
as is the way with the average “jolly young bachelor” 
of Paris, when he has reached fift)', and begins to feel 
rheumatic from his cervical to his caudal vertebrse. 

On the other hand, the native acuteness of his sensi- 
bilities, preserved intact in spite of all he had gone 
through, his delight in overcoming difficulties and achiev- 
ing the impossible, and the necessity he ever labored 
under of finding employment for his surplus energies — all 
these traits were bound to render a love-adventure with a 
woman so utterly different froni the “usual run,” and so 
enchanting in her difference as Juliette de Tilli^re, both 
piquant and delightful. 

Raymond knew very little about the gentle, tender- 
spirited sub-species of womankind of whom Juliette was a 
type; She was just as menacing a danger to his peace of 
mind as he to hers — with this reserve, that the young 
widow was capable of the deepest, most fatal love, while 
with Casal there was always the chance that his passion 
was but caprice. Not with impunity can a man carry 
sixteen or seventeen years of vanity in his memory. 

But as he breathed the generous air of the Champs 
felys^es through his capacious lungs, and strode along 
with the firm step of the swordsman, Raymond Casal was 
ventilating no caprice ; and when the image of Juliette 
came once more to him it was formed against a black 
background of thoughts that would have made the widow 


54 


Was It Love ) 


more than ever appreciate what Gabrielle used to call the 
pedantries of De Poyanne, 

“ Gad ! ’tis a glorious evening,” Casal was soliloquiz- 
ing ; “ if this spring weather holds, the race-tracks will be 
firm. . . , And that dinner wasn’t so bad. People are 
beginning to look to their feed in the world again. It is 
to such fellows as I am that the improvement’s due, all the 
same. If there wasn’t half a dozen of us ready to tell De 
Candolle the truth about his chef and butler, we diners- 
out would be but badly off. 

“ What a fellow really wants now is to know what the 
deuce to do with hinaself between ten o’clock and mid- 
night. I think I’ll found a club to fill the bill. In the 
morning there is sleep, dress, and a ride. After breakfast 
there are always bills to be paid. And from two to six 
there is society ; or, if nj3t, racquets or fencing. From 
five to seven, poker. From eight to ten, dinner. From 
midnight to dawn, the card-table, and all the rest of it. 
From ten to twelve — it is true, there is the theatre, but 
how many pieces in the course of a year are worth seeing 
twice i I am too old, or perhaps not old enough, to 
enjoy that sort of thing ! ” 

Talking of the theatre reminded Casal of a sprightly 
and rather attractive actress of the Vaudeville, to whom 
he had been paying a good deal of attention for some 
months — little Anroux. “ Aha ! ” thought he, “ suppose 
I go and hunt up Christine.” 

In fancy he beheld himself at the stage-door in the 
Rue de la Chauss^e d’Antin, mounting the narrow stair- 
way, saluted by the strange, chilly odors that float about 
the seamy side of every theatre, and then knocking at her 
dressing-room. He could see the handkerchiefs lying 


A Casal in Love. 


55 


around stained with rouge or chalk. Two or three actors, 
buffoons, thee-ing and thou-ing “ the Anroux,” their equal 
on the stage. As soon as they saw Casal they would file 
out, to leave him to bandy the news with Christine, who 
would tell him how Lucie and Arthur had fallen out, 
and so on. . . . 

‘‘ No,” thought Casal, “ I will not go to the Vaudeville 
to-night. I think I will go to the club.” . . . He in- 
voked his imagination for a picture of the play-rooms, 
deserted at that hour ; the footmen in livery slumbering 
on the velveteen lounges, and springing awkwardly to 
“ attention ! ” at the entrance of a member, the snift of 
sfale tobacco struggling for precedence with the sickly 
odors from the overheated stoves. “ I should feel like a 
potential corpse at the club,” he snarled. “ Suppose I 
push on to the Opera ? ‘What ,to see ? ’ The fourth act 
of. ‘ Robert the Devil ’ for the five hundredth time. No, 
I will not patronize the Opera. . . . Ha ! ‘ Phillips’ ! ’ ” 
It was the name of the English bar, in the Rue Mauroy, 
Parisians had just then gone in for. Just after the 
“ rumpus ” that followed the disgraceful duel in the 
“ Eureka ” — more familiarly known as “ The Old ’Un ” — 
a rival bar well known to the night-hawks in the early 
^7os, Casal and his gang had headed a secession, and 
emigrated to the barroom in Rue Mauroy. If a chron- 
icler should chance along, versed in the doings of the 
gilded youth of those and later days, it would be a happy 
thought for him to write a strange chapter on the fashion- 
able Paris bars and restaurants of the last quarter of the 
nineteenth century ; and amongst the most curious of 
these “ cribs,” let him not forget to paint the aristocratic 
Assommoirs, where the grands seigneurs foregather after 


56 


Was It Lovel 


the theatre’s over, to drink cocktails and whiskey, cheek 
by jowl with jockeys and bookmakers. Casal in thought 
stood at the long, sloppy mahogany bar, with its sky- 
scraping bottle-cabinets, its pictures of horses and race- 
courses, and, at the far end, the little conversation-room, 
with its round tables, and engravings of pugilists and 
bull-dogs. 

“Bah !” he cried, “just now I should only find Her- 
bert there, with or without a napkin.” 

This Lord Herbert Bohun, younger brother of one of 
the richest of the English peers, the Marquis of Bambury, 
was at thirty a terrible fellow to drink — sometimes found 
in a state of incipient delirium tremem^ trembling like a 
dotard of ninety. He had become notorious for having 
hunted up from somewhere two or three vile phrases de- 
scriptive of his love for the bottle. It was he who had 
answered the inquiry of a friend as to how he was, by 
saying : “ Very well ; I’ve a splendid thirst ! What’ll you 
put out the unquenchable fire with, dear old boy ?” 

His best fun, which, by the way, was only half in jest, 
was, after a roaring supper with his “pals,” to take one 
end of his napkin in his right hand, and hold the other 
end round his neck with the left ; and then, however 
“ confoundedly ” both hands trembled, he could raise a 
full beaker to his lips, without spilling a drop, by hauling 
up his dexter gradually. 

“ Stay ! ” thought Casal. “ It is already too late. He 
would be now too drunk to know me. Decidedly, what 
/should prefer would be the society of some witty woman.” 

This soliloquy by now had brought “our Casal ” to the 
turning-post. Now, for the first time, afresh, did he rec- 
ollect his sweet neighbor, and he thought aloud : 


A Casal in Love. 


57 


“ Ma foi! Madame de Tillifere ! She would be aw- 
fully jolly to talk to in my misery, I wonder what she’s 
up to ! ” Sooth to say, the formulae he used were terribly 
slangy, and such as would have shocked Poyanne anew. 
But there was a little flickering image in the camera ob- 
scura of this man’s sophisticated soul, destined to start 
into more brilliant life, and prompt his irreverential spirit 
to think more purely. Every man is a small universe in 
himself, and let him be as vicious as he may, he has the \ 
embryonic germs of nobler thoughts, if he would only give 
them air. 

If Casal had never[half-consciously inhaled the deli- 
cious aroma of Juliette’s personality, that, like a moss-hid 
violet, spread its sweetness to the favoring wind, acknowl-^ 
edged but unseen,^never would he have experienced to 
the same extent that sense of repugnance to the soporific 
society of the soubrette of the Vaudeville. Excellent as 
the assigned reasons were for frequenting neither theatre, 
club, nor bar, it is certain that they would not have been 
more operative that night of nights had he not experi- 
enced a pressing wish to be alone. 

Why, if not in order to think at large on the lovely 
and absurdly lovable woman whose image, evoked from 
the deep darkness of his lowest plane of thought, in a 
single second obliterated those mind-pictures of Phillips’ 
and “unlimited loo,’’ of devilled rarebits with Lord 
Bohun at one p.m., and tite-h-tite^ carte blanche^ with “ the 
Anroux ’’ ? 

Sporting men, who lead an intense physical life, end by 
educating their senses to the acumen of savages. They 
have to a marvellous degree the external memory pecu- 
liar to huntsmen, woodsmen, sailors— to all who study 


58 


Was It Love 1 


things, and not the signs of things. Forms and colors 
photograph themselves on their brains with a distinctness 
and relief of which arm chair travellers and studio-paint- 
ers have little idea. 

He eould see Juliette’s figure, the pearls in her glisten- 
ing hair, the chain of pearls around her fine but not too 
slender throat, the shimmer of the wax candles on her 
robe ; but above all the mystery of her smiling lips, that 
seemed to challenge him to fan the gentle dimples beside 
them with some zephyr-speech. 

“ What is she doing now, I wonder ? ” he reiterated 
more respectfully, and with a certain awe. Her sapphire 
eyes, with their volitant lights, began to intimidate his 
coarser fibres, as the revolving mirror of the professional 
hypnotist puts into a trance the most refractory patient. 

“ It is all one,” he cried. “ She looked at me particu- 
larly^ and more than once, as if she meant it, after seem- 
ing actually not to notice me. It was a ‘ put-up thing,’ 
I am positive of it, between her and Gabrielle de Can- 
dolle — the dinner-party. They are intimate friends. I 
didn’t do so badly. Yes, I am sure of it. What was the 
meaning of her curiosity ? Had she heard some other 
woman talking of me ? Perhaps her lover ? — for she 
must have one. After all, perhaps she hasn’t. There 
are not many women who. . . . She lives a quiet life. 
How lovely she is ! Suppose I ‘ make up to her ’ ? I have 
nothing in ■ view for the spring. A good idea. . . . 
Where to find her ? • I dined beside her, and can go and 
see her — happy thought ! — at any time, instead of leav- 
ing a card.” 

He was so delighted with the very idea that he electrified 
the echoes with a peal of merry laughter. “ Cest cela ! ” 


A Casal in Love. 


59 




he cried. “ To-morrow — yes, I must pay her a visit to- 
morrow, What have I got to do to-morrow "i . , . The 
Bois in the morning with De Candolle. Splendid ; he 
will ‘ give me the office.’ Dejeuner chez Christine. That 
can be skipped. I have been breakfasting out too much 
lately. Breakfasting out makes one sulky for the day. 
Well, I skip Christine, and at two p.m. I hasten to the 
charming widow’s. At four I shoot with W^keioff. . . . 
Suppose, for a change, I go to bed ‘ right away.’ It is 
now a little after eleven. Last night — this morning, I 
mean — was the eighth day running I didn’t go to bed till 
cock-crow. Let us turn in now, so as to be in good form 
to-morrow.” 

With this sage resolution, Casal “obliqued” via the 
Rue Boissy d’Anglas, stopping neither at the Imperial 
nor the Petit Cercle, and strode straight for the Rue 
Lisbonne, where was situated the house Raymond inher- 
ited from his father, which was kept up as completely as 
if the family continued to reside there. 

In order to account for the continuous good health of 
men who ostensibly transgress every law of nature as a 
mere matter of preference habitually, and are cited as 
wonders of the day, there must be some safety-valve or 
counterpoise unknown to their admirers and would-be 
imitators. Those who attempt to follow, and do not 
look before they leap, will find themselves out of the 
hunt very quickly. Those who survive, and astonish 
successive generations by their indefatigable activity on 
the hunting-field, at the green table, in the saloon — and 
elsewhere — have taken care, like Casal, to slip out of the 
Corybantic procession occasionally, and, unperceived by 
the crowd, to return to the worship of Hygeia. 


6o 


Was It Love 7 


The sobriety of a monk — or, rather, of a hermit — in 
the morning will perhaps correct an overdose of Veuve 
Cliquot the night before. Sometimes it is a judicious 
nap that does the business, extended to the instant when 
one is forced to dress and join the mob ; sometimes a 
quantum suff. of strenuous exercise in the gymnasium, 
or the good offices of the masseur, or a genuine bit of do- 
mestic hydropathy. Machiavelli has it that “ the world 
is for the men who have cool heads." When Raymond 
Casal rose in the morning at about eight o’clock, to take 
his cold bath, he felt marvellously refreshed by the sweet- 
est slumber of a life that had been nearly all play and 
little work. His matin revery was a continuation of his 
evening dreams — the attempted solution of a metaphysi- 
cal, problem, the key to which was Juliette. 

Casal’s dressing-room was a celebrated apartment 
amongst his particular friends, being remarkable for 
what he facetiously termed his “ library.” It is true he 
had a very fine library in another part of the mansion, 
but these particular shelves held anything rather than 
books. One of the ranges, veiled by the red silk curtains 
so often seen in old-fashioned book-cases, supplementing 
the diamond-shaped panes, contained an extraordinary 
medley of modern guns: breech-loaders by London makers, 
Lang and Purdey ; repeaters from the United States — 
every kind of single and double barrel that could assist 
him in the field. Another held a quite astounding col- 
lectanea of boots, shoes, and slippers — over two hundred 
pairs, from the stoutest elephant-soled, warranted water- 
proof shooting-boot to the most richercM polished shoes 
for evening dress, or velvet slippers for dawdling over 
breakfast — boots for all kinds of sport, from steeple-chas- 


A Casal in Love. 


6i 


ing to polo. Other wings of the “ library” held coats and 
vests, pyjamas, pants, undercoats and overcoats, fur-lined 
coats and “zephyrs,” too numerous by far to mention. 
The younger and less sophisticated dudes of the day used 
often to make a morning pilgrimage in order to “ assist ” 
at the toilette of this modern Maecenas of the arts sutorial 
and sartorial, when they would gaze with affectionate 
interest at these curiosities of dress for half an hour 
at a time, calculating in their minds how soon the time 
might come for them to make a similarly elaborate 
museum. 

Casal was nearer forty years of age than thirty. At 
that period of life one is apt to lavish little cares on one’s 
appearance that in another ten years will change to in- 
difference, and in another will yield to artifice — if there 
is any vanity of person then remaining. It was easy to 
see in Casal’s mien that he still thought himself able to 
please ; and, to put his intention beyond doubt, he was 
no sooner dressed than he sat down and scribbled off a 
note to Madame Christine Anroux, 83 Avenue de I’Alma, 
excusing himself on some frivolous pretext from break- 
fasting with her, humming to himself meanwhile an air 
then in vogue, “ For she is such an Artless Thing.” 

His horse “ Boscard ” came to a trot as he entered the 
Bois, very charming on such a bright spring morning in 
its garb of tender green, rejoicing in all the chromatic 
beauty of geraniums set out for the season, and rhodo- 
dendrons, with their extraordinary variety of tints, coming 
into bloom. If “ Boscard ” was by no means one of his 
speediest horses, deriving, as it did, its nickname from 
the owner’s wish to mark his opinion of the friend who 
had “ taken him in ” by obtaining an out-of-the-way price 


62 


JVas It Love ? 


for the animal on the strength of its showy appearance, 
his choice of steed this morning was an additional proof 
of a wish on the rider’s part to “ take it easy ” and “ dream ” 
as he went along. [jVhen chance, as we unthinkingly 
call the mysterious chain of events that dominates the 
earthly career, brings two persons face to face who are 
destined to influence each other’s lives, it seems to take a 
pleasure in multiplying coincidences, so much so as to 
justify one’s belief in presentiments.^ But common logic 
suffices to explain these things. Ii it was in the nature 
of events that some day Casal and Juliette should be pre- 
sented to each other, it was perhaps not less natural that 
he should that very morning encounter not only De Can- 
dolle, with whom he had made the appointment, but 
afterward Mose, Prosny, and Madame d’Arcole, and no 
less natural that all these persons should have remarked 
the evening before the depression of Madame de Tilliere 
af^r Casal’s sudden departure, especially noticeable fol- 
lowing the high spirits in which she appeared to be at 
the dinner-table, and “ chaff ” him pleasantly about her. 
Ten times a day men and women of the world indulge in 
such little strokes of, wit at each other’s expense ; and 
Casal, had it regarded anybody else, would have been the 
first to admit that it was only for the sake of talk. At 
such a time these feather-strokes of society tattle fell in 
so well with his humor that he was delighted to take 
particular notice of them. 

First it was Prosny, galloping through the beautiful 
glades of the Bois, who shouted, without reining his nag : 
“ Broken-hearted, the little widow, after your flight last 
night, Casal — broken-hearted, my boy ! ” 

Then, in another mile or so, Mos6, who stopped our 


A Casal in Love. 


63 


cavalier with a motion of his jewelled hand. He was on 
foot, according to his morning habit, indulging in un- 
limited walking exercise, in order to ward off an incipient 
attack of diabetes, taking to his regimen with the unap- 
peasable energy that distinguishes the Jew and the Ameri- 
can. These two races, the most pig-headed peoples of the 
world, and also the least intimately known, because it is ^ 
but so lately they have climbed to the top of the social * 
staircase, have in common this distinguishing trait of ada- 
mantine firmness in face of all possible misfortunes. It is 
not unusual to see a Yankee or a Hebrew at the age of 
fifty engaged in hewing from the rough a novel stepladder 
to fortune by means of protracted personal effort in some 
new career of his choice before unpractised. The Israel- 
ite, in particular, seldom misses his mark in the smallest 
detail of the day’s affairs ; and thus Mose, formerly un- 
friendly with Casal, but now reconciled with him, has- 
tened to make a remark that he imagined would be well 
received, and might prove an acceptable hint : 

“ How soon you went away last night, my dear fel- 
low ! ” 

“ I had a friend waiting for me at the club,” said Casal, 
from horseback. Already the fine brown eyes of the 
Hebrew seemed to be uncomfortably reading his thoughts, 
and he betook himself to the first subterfuge that came 
into his head. 

“And you carted off with you the best behavior of 
the ladies,” continued Mosd. “ Madame de Candolle and 
her sister began to mutter to each other in a corner, and 
as for the little De Tilliere, when you were gone there 
might as well have been nobody left in the world ! ” 

A quarter of an hour later Casal came across Madame 


64 


Was It Love 7 


d’Arcole in her dainty turn-out with the cream-colored 
ponies. She signalled him with her whip to stop, and 
when he was opposite the carriage cried : 

“ And how do you like my sister’s bosom friend ? 
Ideally pretty, isn’t she ? And you sneaked away to go 
Heaven only knows where ! Maladroit !” 

Giving a flick to her ponies, she was off like a flash, 
with a complicated smile on her dark face that seemed to 
signify to Raymond : “ If you are not an ignoramus, you 
will throw your bread in those waters, and it will return to 
you before many days are over.” It was hardly the advice 
of a lady, herself the sister of the noble-minded Madame 
de Candolle. But instinctively the Duchess felt no great 
love for Juliette, because the latter always seemed to 
be coming between her and Gabrielle. She adored this 
bright-haired, brave little sister of hers, and that was why 
she would not be sorry to be able to say : “ He bien, 
your angel without wings is carrying on a full-fledged 
flirtation with Raymond Casal.” 

And then, as though to clinch the matter, when, a few 
minutes after, he met De Candolle, as they ambled along 
together, the latter cried, with a fat Teutonic laugh — his 
great-grandfather had intermarried in Wurtemburg after 
the Revolution : 

“ Good luck, my chicken ; you didn’t manoeuvre so 
badly last night, eh ? A little prude, the widow, isn’t she ? 
Madame Bernard tells me the Captain nearly died of the 
blues after he married her. ... I had my fears for you. 
. . . But you played your part to perfection ! ” 

“ What are you ‘getting at,’ De Candolle ? ” 

“ As if you didn’t know ! You and the Widow Til- 
li^re.” 


A Casal m Love, 


65 


“Well, what sort of a woman is she, anyhow ? ” 

“ Oh ! everything you can imagine that is most truly 
rural, most un-Parisian, most chiitish. She lives with an 
antiquated mamma in a house as old and rickety as a 
Pompeian mausoleum. In one word, if she and my wife 
were shaken up together in a sack, I don’t know which 
would come out last ! ” 

The sum total of this human porker’s wit consisted in 
aiming his bluff epigrams at the exquisite creature whom 
he could neither forgive for the benefits she showered on 
him, the fortune she abandoned to his caprices, nor for 
the treason to his marital vows with which he repaid her. 
He added, after another chuckle at his mot : 

“ Was the widow to your taste ? Would you marry 
her if you had the chance ? ” 

This introduction was timely enough to deter Casal 
from asking the question he had in view about Juliette’s 
address. “ De Candolle can’t get through the day de- 
cently,” he thought, “ without bragging about his Madame 
Bernard. ... It doesn’t matter ; I can find the address 
from the directory.” 

Casal was so impatient to pay his intended visit to 
Madame de Tilli^re that he abridged his morning ride, a 
prey to an exaltation of soul quite rare with him. As soon 
as he reached his own house, his first thought was to turn 
to one of those blue books of fashion in which the retired 
grocer, at the cost of a subscription, can admire his name 
in print, along with those of millionnaires and princes — 
number and street complete — authenticated as a member 
of the Upper Ten. Madame de Tilliere could not be found 
in the repertory of fashion, because the house was in her 
mother’s name. 


66 


PFas It Love J 


“ I cannot cross-examine any of the folk that were of 
the party last night,” thought Casal ; “ they are ‘ on to me ’ 
too much as it is.” 

All these little speeches proved too well how much he 
had interested the widow for him to renounce his visit 
now. If Casal had not been more interested in her than 
he himself imagined, he might have postponed it in order 
to take the chances of a talk with Madame de Candolle to 
learn Juliette’s street and number. In preference to that, 
he bethought himself that he could send his valet to inquire 
Madame de Tilliere’s address from the Countess’s concierge. 
“ The very thing ! ” he thought. “ The concierge has not 
yet heard any society back-chat about the matter, and will 
not scent anything the least unusual.” 

Nevertheless, which showed how deeply the widow’s 
image had sunk into his heart, the bare idea of these 
two servants chirping, chin to chin, about their mistress’s 
and their master’s affairs, and importing the fair Juliette 
into their tattle, in spite of the unlikelihood, was so re- 
pellent to him that Casal, as a preventive, charged his 
man with half a dozen other frivolous commissions before 
throwing out at the last : “ By the way, as you will be 
in the neighborhood, just ask the De Candolles’ porter 
the address of Madame de Tilliere and her mother. 1 
shall have to leave my card, and have forgotten it. Can 
you recollect the name — De Tilliere ? ” 

Thanks to this little ruse, which would have seemed 
extremely funny to Lord Bohun in his cups, he was able 
at two o’clock to lift the same old-fashioned knocker in 
the Rue Matignon on which, in our first chapter, we saw 
the Countess lay her well-gloved hand — a summons which 
drew in its train all the after- movements of the persons of 


A Casal in Love. 


67 


this little drama. The carriage “ accident ” was coming 
to the front, with its contingencies, already. 

“ It suits her very well, this sequestered eighteenth- 
century house,” thought Casal, as he traversed the grass- 
grown court, and stepped into the quaint glass porch. 
The concierge had informed him Madame de Tilli^re was 
within. Juliette made it a rule never to leave word that 
she was “ not at home,” just as, later on in the evening, 
she was in the habit of receiving not only De Poyanne, 
but all her friends, as they might chance to call. Besides, 
since there were not so many who had the right of entrde^ 
and as she was not in the habit of pronouncing those 
meaningless invitations to call that pass current in soci- 
ety, but rather knew pretty well when to expect this one or 
that, such a method proved rarely or never inconvenient. 
Casal was delighted with this facility of access. 

“ Nothing to conceal ! ” he thought, pressing the elec- 
tric button on the double red-curtained doors. “ I hope 
she is alone,” he added, as the footman conducted him 
through the grand salon into the boudoir beyond — silent 
witness, the preceding night, of the Count Henry de 
Poyanne’s tirade against him. 

No sooner was the door thrown open than, at the first 
glance, he saw Juliette reposing, rather than sitting, in a 
huge easy-chair, in a snowy robe trimmed with airy lace, 
which set off her spiritual style of beauty admirably. Right 
in front of her, seated on a low fauteuil, and conversing 
with her in confidential tones, as though he was at home, 
sat D’Avanpon. Casal and the diplomat had met fre- 
quently at the Petit Cercle, where the old beau often 
went to air his faded physiognomy and collate particulars 
of the most recent society scandal — a sort of French Paul 


68 


Was It Love ? 


Pry without the Englishman’s benevolence. The gilded 
youth of the Rue Royale made fine fun of the snuffy old 
fellow that was always girding at the evil education and 
worse pleasures of the day. At fifty-five D’Avan9on was 
as empressl with women as if the date had been ’47 in- 
stead of thirty years later. This was the man that never 
smoked after dinner, so that he might be the more with 
the ladies, seated now in full enjoyment of an interview 
with the very person Raymond came to see, where he will 
talk in tones that scarcely stir the air. If you find him 
installed in a house which you enter for a tete-a-lHe, you 
may wait as long as you have patience, but you will not 
make D’Avan9on budge for all your waiting. You cannot 
“ choke him off,” as impatient suitors have it. The elderly 
ex-diplomatist was a type that lovers abominate. 

Casal’s first thought was to %vish the widow’s ancient 
admirer at the devil, probably arguing that his tame 
twaddle and pre-adamite anecdotes were more suited to 
the ear of the mother than to the beautiful Juliette. 

“ Here’s a fossil ‘ pull back,’ ” he said to himself, in- 
elegantly. “ I know the old bore ; steel-coated bullets 
would fall flat against his hide. Allons! this visit is a loss 
of valuable time.” 

“ Casal, Raymond Casal, here ! ” cried D’Avan9on to 
himself. “ Aha ! I must charge myself with keeping 
order, that’s certain.” And even while he was pump- 
handling the new-comer’s hand, his surprise was so great 
that he was forced to break out with ; “ Is it possible, my 
old friend” (to Juliette), “that you knew this bad boy, 
and I wasn’t aware of it ? ” 

“ I had the honor of being introduced to Madame de 
Tilliere at the Countess de Candolle’s,” responding for the 


A Casal in Love. 


69 


lady to whom D’Avanpon made the remark. He had 
taken in the fact that Juliette herself was scarcely capable 
of answering, so excessive had been her surprise at his 
unexpected apparition. This evidence of emotion did 
not fail to make up to him for the contretemps of the 
presence of the old nuisance. It was no longer necessary 
for him to wrestle with his own interpretations of yester- 
day’s happenings, nor to interrogate Prosny or Mos^, the 
Countess or Candolle. Such and so sudden a change of 
countenance — for she was blushing to the very roots of 
her hair — was surely a sign of preoccupation of the heart, 
especially in a woman of society, with whom uninterrupted 
mastery of their own faces is held as much a necessary 
virtue as courage in face of the enemy is with soldiers. 
How could women exist unless they were accustomed to 
master the outward signs of their emotions, surrounded) 
as they are with eyes that will interpret their every change 
of visage as malignly as the judge who interrogates the 
criminal in the dock ? 

But Juliette had, since the evening before, gone through 
the hard experience of so many anxious sleepless hours 
that it was not surprising if her nerves, at such a trying 
moment, proved weaker than her will. 

After having, in answer to her self-propounded question 
about Henry, twenty times told herself “ I love him still,” 
and thirty times admitted that she loved him not, the 
widow had felt somewhat as though she had stumbled 
over a precipice, and been caught by a tree in the fall, 
out of the reach of mortal help, although beyond the 
danger of immediate death. 

During almost the entire night, as Casal was sleeping 
the sleep of a healthy child, as Poyanne for his part was 


70 


JVas It Love^ 


half aware in overshadowed dreams of the bereavement 
he was upon the eve of suffering, Juliette was shedding 
salt tears on her little cot, witness, in former days, of her 
innocent imaginings and of the happy premonitions of 
lost girlish days. 

But why, in the midst of all this misery, caused by the 
canker in what once was daily love for Henry ; why, in 
the deepest depth of these suspiria de profundis, was she 
forced to admit the obtrusive image of a man whom she 
had never spoken to till the night before, who was doubt- 
less far enough from thinking similarly, if at all, of her, 
or so she imagined ? Why was the late-coming and un- 
refreshing sleep of the morning disturbed by the same 
apparition ? 

It must have been the case that Casal had made a very 
deep impression upon her, because his image had been 
interwoven with her every thought since Juliette quitted 
the Hotel de Candolle. But in what delicate terms could 
a conscientious father confessor describe the nature of 
this impression, how give it a name, without scandalizing 
the modesty of nature ? 

Should she admit that Casal, this notorious evil-liver, 
had awakened in her, by his mere presence of an hour, 
an obscure desire for his society for life ? Could it be 
that this man represented to her, who perhaps had never 
yet met anybody capable of drawing her affections en- 
tirely out of herself, a certain physical beau ideal, an ideal 
that for every woman must necessarily vary as she herself 
varies from the common type ? The imaginary confessor 
might very well have warned Juliette, at the best, to be- 
ware of putting herself in the way of a man who had 
evidently the power of picking the lock of her spirit so 


A Casal in Love. 


71 


easily, especially as the foundation on which she had so 
long rested her heart was beginning to fail her. 

She had begun the day by an humble petition to the 
higher powers to give her strength to continue to do her 
duty, and it was with the calmness of resignation, which 
rewards every honest mortified spirit, that she was listening 
to D’Avan9on’s tittle-tattle as Casal entered — surprising 
her into a sudden spasm of emotion, the source of which 
she could scarcely any longer disguise from herself. No 
sooner, however, had Madame de Tilliere recovered her 
composure than, with a gracious gesture to the new-comer, 
she resumed her seat, and folding the long train of her 
boudoir dress round her feet, replied to Raymond’s ques- 
tion as to w'hether she did not feel w^ell : 

“I rose unw'ell, indeed, this morning. A terrible 
headache, which I can only account for on the sup- 
position that there is thunder in the air. I thought it 
would have disappeared at midday, but the pain is no 
better.” 

Juliette took up a tiny bottle of perfumed salts from 
her w'ork-box, and sniffed it gently as she spoke, as 
though very civilly to signify : “You see, monsieur, it is 
impossible for you to stay very long.” 

But what mattered the coldness of this little turn of 
humor on her part when he knew it was but assumed ? 
What signified the manifest ill-temper of D’Avangon, who 
stood with one elbow on the mantel, fixing his eye-glasses 
more, securely astraddle of his nose, and scanning with 
semi-impertinent attention the table of contents of the 
last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes, perched for 
his convenience against the looking-glass ? . . . What 
did all this by-play matter when he, Casal, had just made 


72 


JVas It Love 7 


the delicious discovery that his presence was sufficient 
to cause the charming widow to exhibit a discomposure 
that could be traced to one thing only ? That deep 
blush, complemented by a deathly pallor, her gentle 
reception of his endeavors to please her the night before, 
coupled with her unwarrantable chilliness to him now, 
without any new development — all these were a balm to 
the spirit of the eager Casal, that more than made up 
for the immediate awkwardness. It is quite possible that 
had he found in the pretty boudoir of the Rue Matignon, 
bright now with the afternoon April sun instead of dark- 
ened by Juliette’s supposititious thunder-cloud, a brisk 
and laughter-loving lady, dressed for visiting and chatter- 
ing of the last piece at the Fran9ais, of the coming races 
for the Prix de PariSy and (the latest thing out in the way 
of family skeletons, he might have murmured with a 
sober sigh : / 

“ Allans ! all women are the same at heart ! ” and 
concluded : 

“ It was hardly worth while my putting off the Anroux 
for this entertainment.” 

But the atmosphere of seclusion that was spread round 
Juliette like some rare Arabian Nights perfume, the 
enigmatic nature of her character and sentiments — first 
so clearly curious to become acquainted with him, then 
drawing back within her shell, resolved to avoid him ; next 
this singular scene, which he could only interpret as an 
artificial coyness — every circumstance connected so far 
with Madame de Tilliere excited to the utmost the curi- 
osity of this blasd pleasure-seeker. The ‘ man of action ’ 
in his nature, fretting at inaction, roused itself, as at the 
gambling table, when a new arrival sought to bluff the 


A Casal in Love. 


73 


company, himself included, or when he heard the ramp- 
ing of his first tiger. 

Meanwhile, Juliette was beginning one of those syrup- 
and-water colloquies, without rhyme or reason in them, 
which have caused so many novelists and dramatists to 
satirize the twaddling propensities of society. 

“ Madame d’Arcole looked her very best last night, did 
she not ? ” 

“White suits her splendidly,” said Casal. 

“It was her turn of good looks,” put in D’Avan^on, 
shutting up his Reveu^ and delicately returning his eye- 
glasses to their especial repository. “ You remember, chire 
amie, how horribly worn and yellow she was looking when 
we met her at the exhibition in the Rue de S^ze. . . . 
A propos, when am I to call for you to take you to see the 
tapisserie we were speaking of just now ? ” 

“ Away with you, old dotard,” thought Casal, as the ex- 
diplomat went on about his carpets, and their expected 
round of the magazines, “ take all the pains in . the 
world to tell me I am one too many, and that you are the 
cock of the walk. That will not prevent me from coming 
back. And you, my pretty madame ! You are very anx- 
ious to have me believe that your whole soul is on your 
lips just now. Luckily for me, I am persuaded that you 
are playing a charming comedy, half attention, half head- 
ache ; you are really exceedingly charming, with your 
white hand on your temple, as though it ached so very, 
very badly, my poor dear ! ” 

He put in a word, however, now and again, letting, 
as the evening before, the conversational foot of Hercules 
peep out from under the ioga virilis, now and again show- 
ing his good sense and acuteness of judgment. Although 


74 


IVas It Lovei 


he had never purchased objects of art merit with any 
more serious intent than giving them away the next day 
to one or other of his numerous friends, he had often 
talked, as we have hinted, with men of profound art 
knowledge, and was able to enjoy the malicious satis- 
faction of correcting one or two of D’Avan9on’s errors 
on the marks of certain bits of porcelain. 

“ You have given your mind to pottery and collecting, 
monsieur asked Madame de Tilliere. 

“ Not the least in life,” said Casal, smiling at the idea. 
“ But I have had a friend or two who was taken that way, 
and I kept my ears open in their company.” 

“ He a collector of china ! ” interposed D’Avangon. 
“ It is easy to see you have only known the gentleman 
for four and twenty hours.” 

Ironically proceeding in a tone that revealed his hid- 
den anger at Casal’s presence — a common enough phe- 
nomenon amongst men of fifty odd who are not willing 
to admit that they are jealous, and still are very much 
so — and with a childish resentment, without having any 
right to either of the three feelings, he continued : 

“You are hardly aware, madame, what the typical 
young men of the day ‘ go in for,’ if you believe this one 
capable of anything more serious than ‘ chic ’ and sport. 
. . . This fine specimen, as you see,” waving his en- 
cased eye-glass on its gold chain at Casal, ‘ ‘ is unusually 
intelligent. I have known him from the cradle. . . . Ah, 
yes ! he made his debut at the club just as I returned from 
my mission to Florence. . . . Gifted !— why, yes ; he 
could draw caricatures, play Offenbach, speak Spanish, 
and understood English and Russian. . . . You would 
be able to gauge his wonderful memory if you could hear 


A Casal in Love. 


75 


him discoursing with his friends. ‘ Do you think Fare- 
well or Livarot will come in first to-morrow at Auteuil ? 
. . . Which champagne did you go in for at dinner, to- 
day, old pal ? Pommery-Greno or Pieper Heidsieck ? . . . 
Machault shot off a handicap with Werekowski ; he took 
twenty points and a licking. . . . Who takes the bank 
to-night at baccarat ? ’ . . . Not another topic, madame. 
Casal couldn’t sing another song to save his neck ! ” ... 

“ Isn’t he spiteful ? ” Casal said amiably, when D’Avan- 
9on had finished ; “isn’t he a splendid old griffin ? ” And 
as he rose to take his leave, he brought his rather heavy 
hand down on the diplomat’s padded shoulder with a 
gay familiarity that was at once an answer and a snub to 
these reproaches, treating the preacher as though he had 
been a hobbledehoy. “ Allans !" he persisted, “don’t go 
on saying naughty things of me to Madame de Tilliere 
when my back is turned ; and you, madame, you may 
safely take my word for it that much you may be told of 
me will be apocryphal ! ’’ 

“ I will wager a new tile she will lead him a dance for 
five minutes on my account,’’ he said as he walked away 
down the Rue Matignon to the Elysees. “ That’s all he 
will get for his pains — a good ‘ wigging.’ ‘ Let him play 
the fool,’ another time, ‘ nowhere but in ’s own house ’ ! ’’ 
And he made a motion as though he was prodding Polo- 
nius d’Avan9on under the fifth rib. 

“ But the question is, how am I to approach her again ? 
And soon ! ’’ Then, after a minute’s reflection : “ I must 
have a little talk with Madame de Candolle.’’ 

“ Indeed, I think you have been exceedingly unkind to 
Monsieur Casal,’’ Juliette was saying at the same mo- 
ment to D’Avangon. “ What have you got against him ? ’’ 


76 


IFas It Lave ? 


“ I ? against Monsieur Casal ? Why, not the least thing 
in the world. These viveurs are not my affinity, however, 
I object to them on principle. Voild, tout ! But you are 
suffering ? ” said D’Avan9on, ill disguising his embarrass- 
ment. 

“Yes,” said Juliette, again leaning back in the easy- 
chair and half shutting her eyes ; “ I shall be forced to 
go to bed. I must get well by dinner-time ; my cousin De 
Nanpay and Monsieur Poyanne are coming.” 

She was not telling the truth about herself, however, 
for her head was no more in agony than when her new 
friend interrupted her quiet conversation with Polonius, 
who, she saw, was in a humor to go on talking for a fort- 
night — and Juliette already could not bear to listen to 
anything fresh against “ our Casal.” 

At dinner, when her mother questioned her before 
Poyanne about her engagements and guests of the day, 
she vouchsafed only D’Avan9on’s name, with not a men- 
tion of the other. It was certain, however, that this other, 
whom she had made up her mind on no account to allow 
again across her threshold, v/as occupying the lion’s share 
of her imagination, for she had even shown a most un- 
usually callous front to De Poyanne’s affectionate fare- 
well, pronounced to Juliette when they were alone. 

“Yes, Juliette,” he sighed, “I leave to-morrow morn- 
ing — and for perhaps six weeks. I shall take advantage 
of the opportunity to reconstruct the Journal representing 
our opinions — the opinions of the Right.” 

“ I trust you will carry your candidates,” said she, not 
being able to find one word of regret for her unhappy 
lover. She failed to interpret the glance of anguish he 
threw her for sending him away from her side for so long 


A Casal in Love. 


77 


without^ne of those rose-leaf pressures of the moutl^hat 
send the smiling suitor into exile with a shibboleth of 
consolation, enabling him to murmur in his grief with 
Herrick : 

“ These kisses on thy lips I set. 

Not that they are so pleasant, 

But that thou mayest pay the debt 
When I once more am present.” 

But oh ! how far more bitter had been the parting could 
Count Henry de Poyanne have guessed the temptations 
to which he was relinquishing the woman who was and 
would remain so dear, so infinitely dear, to him for all 
the moments of his life, the rare and lovely “ phantom 
of delight,” whom he loved so utterly, without possessing 
either the crude courage or the crystal tact to make clear 
to her the fulness of his affection ! 




V. 

“give him an inch.” 

“ Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coflte.” 

— French proverb. 

When Casal hit on the Countess de Candolle as a likely 
helpmeet in his project of laying siege to Juliette’s heart, 
he reckoned on Gabrielle’s sympathy, which he instinct- 
ively felt was his, and on the irresistible penchant that im- 
pels romantic women to intermeddle in the love-affairs of 
such of their friends as appear unhappy or too innocent 
to help themselves. His own part in the comedy that 
was to be rung up did not appear to him a difficult 
one. . . . But -would it prove a comedy ? 

In spite of Casal’s assurance that he had touched 
Juliette’s feelings, after the visit he had just paid, he 
found, on taking thought, that there were so many ele- 
ments of uncertainty in his position toward her that be- 
hind his exhilaration he felt all day a strange disquietude. 
At the Salle des Mirlitons, where he shot off a match with 
the Russian, he showed an eccentricity on the target 
that quite astonished his particular friends. At dinner 
with two hail-fellows from the club, invited by him to the 
Cafe Anglais so that there should be no fear of being 
short of company to keep them in countenance, he was 
extremely taciturn, and still appeared preoccupied when 
they hauled him off to the circus to admire a new aerial 


“ Give Him an Inch.” 


79 


beauty who dived head foremost an incredible distance 
into the net, and performed other astonishing feats, be- 
sides seeking reputation at the cannon’s mouth. To the 
frequenters of Phillips’s, in whose midst he generally 
pulled up in the neighborhood of midnight, he looked so 
glum and glowering that they began to chaff him about 
the state of his vitals. 

The next day, in proportion as the hour drew near 
when he might decently call on the Countess to talk to 
her about her friend Juliette, the obstacles between them 
loomed up larger ; and it was with his heart in his mouth, 
and almost a schoolboy’s timidity, that he rang the bell in 
the Rue Tilsitt — less than forty-eight hours after the din- 
ner-party, less than twenty-four after his interview with 
Madame de Tilliere, with old D’Avangon in the witness- 
box. This novel feeling of stage-fright in a man like 
Casal, whose path through life had been so far strewn 
with rosy triumphs, this sudden and unexpected sensation 
of shame, perhaps, might nevertheless please Gabrielle, 
and cause her to lend a favorable ear to his projects. 
But there was in the Countess’s mind another feeling 
likely to forward his improvised suit. 

Gabrielle de Candolle — we had better begin by praising 
the pretty Countess — was truly and disinterestedly fond 
of Juliette de Tilliere. They met in the long ago as girls, 
at one of the dancing-parties that relieve the monotony 
of country castles, almost the sole authentic relics of the 
old noblesse of France. The families of Nan^ay and De 
Candolle, though their estates were five and twenty miles 
apart, began to visit from that day. After the war of 
1870, which had so cruelly confined them to their man- 
sions, and bereaved the Widow Tilliere, the two women 


8o 


IVas It Love ? 


were brought still more together. Gabrielle began to 
take her friend into her confidence about the great sorrow 
of her life. The two had shed those streaming tears upon 
each other’s hearts that are half sweetened by true sym- 
pathy. This high exchange of pity between these noble- 
minded and affectionate women had woven festoons of 
devotion between them that might never more be sun- 
dered. Gabrielle detested Juliette’s fondness for and 
admiration of Poyanne, in virtue of sufficiently complex 
perceptions. 

In the first place, because Juliette never seemed to 
speak about Henry in an open and above-board manner. 
Gabrielle could easily see that there was an understand- 
ing between the two, but into its exact nature she was not 
permitted to pry. She told herself that Poyanne certainly 
loved Madame de Tilliere, and that Juliette, on her side, 
was not indifferent to his admiration. Probably, if the 
Countess had been -informed fully and freely of the secret 
compact of marriage that bound this romantic couple, she 
would not have nursed such an antipathy for their inti- 
macy, whose mysterious nature irritated her and fed her 
jealous premonitions. The jealousy of friendship, let us 
admit. Who does not know this tantalizing and almost 
amusing form of susceptibility, from which even dumb 
animals are not exempt ? Take the spaniel that sits at 
your hearthstone, impose upon the poor creature the 
presence of another plaything of its own species, and then 
divide your endearments equally between them ; you will 
soon have occasion to note the vortex of jealousy and 
envy that upsets the mind of your old favorite. If the 
word jealousy had been whispered in Gabrielle’s ear, she 
would have contemptuously scouted the insinuation. 


Give Him an Inch." 


8i 


Of all human passions jealousy appears to a noble spirit 
the basest and most hateful. But, alas ! who can deny 
that it is at once the vice that most easily creeps into 
the recesses of the soul and is least readily recognized, 
I while it is the commonest failing that mankind possesses ; 
for its very source is in that part of our natures which 
makes us sociable beings ? Envy fattens on comparisons. 
Did ever a half-starved painter envy an emperor his 
crown and carriages as acutely as he envies his fellow- 
painter over the way, who carried olf a silver medal at the 
Academy when he only took a bronze one ? Imagine two 
women, both handsome, dowered with youth and every 
gift of birth and fortune ; suppose them knitted, as were 
these two, by the dearest links of friendship ; yet while 
one is imprisoned, by the meshes of fate and her prin- 
ciples, in a miserable marriage, the other is free, when she 
meets him, to care for the man of her heart, and do you 
suppose that there will be no jealousywhen comes divided 
love ? At first it will take the form of instinctive antip- 
athy for the man who causes the pain of contrasting 
sorrow with joy. Soon she begins to justify her dislike 
by finding out and exaggerating the faults and failings 
of her friend’s friend ; she regards him with the squint 
eye of malevolence that would see sensuality in Marcus 
Aurelius, and egotism in Vincent de Paul. Thus Ma- 
dame de Candolle had made out to her own satisfaction 
that the Count was one of the most pragmatic of individ- 
uals, simply because the great orator, haunted by the 
world unseen, and devoured by love for his life-work, had 
a habit of talking politics. She accused him of being 
a tyrant, because at every turn Juliette refused this or 
that invitation of hers in order to pass the evening or to 
6 


82 


IVas It Lovet 


dine with Henry. Thus, by skipping all intermediary 
arguments, she jumped to the conclusion, in good faith, 
that if this marriage ever took place, it would be the un- 
doing of Juliette. With regard to Poyanne she had made 
up her mind. I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,’ ” she 
would quote, one-third in jest and two in earnest. Of 
course, Juliette, with that tendency to maintain an atmos- 
phere of profound peace around her which was one of 
her leading traits, kept a bridle on her lips lest by chance 
Gabrielle’s antipathy should reach the Count to pain 
him, the latter in no degree suspecting what an adversary 
he' had in the handsome Countess. On the other hand, 
he admired her for her high birth, her unsullied honor, 
and the purity of her religious faith. He bewailed the 
fact of her marriage with such a vulgar titulaire. He felt 
the warmth of Gabrielle’s love for Juliette, and used to 
say : 

“ In her you have a friend for life.” 

Such silent delicacy is far from disarming those who 
hate us ; in fact, the usual result is fresh hostility. Every 
thinker who has moralized upon such matters has sighed 
over this saddest delinquency of the human soul — the last 
thing we can forgive in man or woman is that they have 
caused us pangs of conscience because we have wronged 
them ; above all, when these injuries are sentimental 
wrongs that we can hardly ourselves define. If Madame 
de Candolle had seen in Poyanne an open enemy, his 
hostility would have angered her less than his eternal 
deference. It is related of Beethoven that he abruptly 
left an otherwise convenient lodging because the landlord 
made him two profound salaams on entering. He was 
too civil. Gabrielle went still further, at such times as she 


“ Give Him an Ijich." 


83 


felt uncommonly spiteful, and accused the Count of hy- 
pocrisy. Who knows ? Perhaps her spirit, racked by the 
mad misery of her unhappy marriage, suffered still further 
through a third comparison, the contrast between the em- 
bruted man of title whose name she bore, and the eloquent, 
laborious, benevolent gentleman who stood in Juliette’s 
good graces. Does it need any -further explanation to 
account for the cordial reception Casal’s plan of cam- 
paign met with in the Rue Tilsitt ? 

Gabrielle was seated by a flower-covered centre-table 
in the salon-boudoir where she received her intimates, 
writing a batch of the society letters with which women of 
her rank amuse their solitude. Her carriage had been or- 
dered for half-past two. Two o’clock, and the bell rings. 
It is probably the upholsterer to interview the Countess 
about the furniture for the summer pavilion they have 
added to the mansion. Tv/o rings ; it is a visitor. She 
thinks she ought to have denied herself. ‘‘ Tiens!” said 
she aloud ; “ c'esi toi, Casal ! Here’s fortune.” And then 
to herself : “Why does he come to see me, this gentle- 
man who hardly ever visits ? ” 

“ Our Casal ” responded with a vague smile not free 
from shamefacedness : “ I wanted a word with Candolle 
about a horse, if he wants to replace the roadster that ran 
away with you. I knew that you were here, and so I came 
up-stairs. Am I in the least putting you out. Coun- 
tess ? ” 

“ Certainly not,” she answered ; “ it is not so easy to get 
you out of your shell.” And then the conversation, starting 
thus plausibly, veers round to the dinner-party of two days 
ago. Gabrielle pronounced the name of the fair widow. 
She recognized the light of curiosity in Casal’s eyes, and 


84 


JVas It Love ? 


that his lips involuntarily half opened, as they do when 
one is about to hazard some important question. 

“ It is all clear ! ” she said to herself. “ I have you, 
my gentleman. You came to talk to me about Juliette.” 

At such moments as these woman is in her element, 
charming in kittenish grace, feeling her way to your men- 
tal pulse with the nicest acumen ; till such time as in your 
innocence you blurt out and blazon forth your interest in 
the other lady. Her first movement of curiosity is to look 
up sideways at you, like an amiable parrot, and then her 
attention is buried in her busy eyes. If she was writing, 
she now holds her pen in the air. If she wasn’t writing, 
and is near the desk, she will take up a pen or a book, and 
seem engaged. Then she will throw a little phrase into 
the conversational cauldron — quite a tiny feathery word 
— to the ear. It is with such witcheries that an evil-dis- 
posed woman is able to poison the fountain of your passion 
by one of those still, small “ People say a lot of things, 
you know,” which serve as vehicles for the most atrocious 
libels. She will name you, with a set smile that is tran- 
quillity itself, the name of the gentleman who, “ it is sup- 
posed" was the last to figure on the lists of the woman of 
your heart. And then she will go on : “ What, did you 
not know that ? I should have thought these things were 
common property.” All these little speeches will no 
doubt be counted against them in another world. 

On the other hand, women who are good-natured, but 
disposed to scent out a tale of love as a cat a saucer of 
milk, deploy their sweetest diplomacy to get themselves 
into your confidence. You become, as it were, the mile- 
stone of their sighs. They tender you the privilege of shar- 
ing a secret that is not yours to divide, only to rue it the 


“ Give Hun an Inch." 


H 


moment you move away from their mesmeric sphere. Of 
all the tricks they have to turn you inside out the most 
hackneyed but not the least acute is to speak aloud the 
thing that is on the tip of your tongue, to give your 
thoughts a local habitation and a name. It is the surest 
way for the charmer to get at the truth of you. We must 
allow that men, as a rule, fall easy victims to the femi- 
nine inquisitor. It was in this very way that Casal came 
out with the name of the lady on his mind : 

“ A propos of Madame de Tilli^re, how is she ? Have 
you seen her since yesterday morning ? ” 

“ No, I have not,” said the Countess. “ I do not add. 
How about yourself ? Unmannerly boor as we all know 
you, I will guarantee to certify you have not so much as 
left your card ! ” 

“Guarantee nothing of the kind,” cried Raymond,* 
triumphantly. “You would perjure yourself. I went 
one better than merely leaving a bit of pasteboard. I 
paid her a visit with all the honors ! ” 

“ Well, you were logical,” said Gabrielle. “ My little 
friend is a lump of delight, as witty and sympathetic as 
though she failed of prettiness ; distinguished and attrac- 
tive as though she had no other graces. I am almost in 
love with her myself. And she is the best of women, 
Raymond Casal. Assure yourself, my friend, that there 
are some good women in the world. It will do you ever 
so much good to cultivate their acquaintance. And 
what did you two find to talk about ? ” 

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” almost sighed Casal. “I ask 
no better fate than to be allowed to put to the test what 
you have just told me. Unhappily, the good women oc- 
cupy the most sequestered niches in life’s cathedral. I 


86 


JVas It Lovet 


meet you, alone, you, madame — ” And Casal bowed 
profoundly. “I have not had the chance to see any- 
thing of your friend, as yet. Who do you think was 
there when I gained admittance ? ” 

He stopped with the query. With any other but Ga- 
brielle he might have reckoned the answer would come 
like an echo, “ Her lover ? ” — that is, always supposing 
she had one. 

^ But had Juliette a lover ? 

Raymond had been turning over this question in his 
waking hours for two days, and he would have been 
doomed to a bad five minutes if the Countess’s reply had 
been: “Why, So-and-so, of course!” But these paltry 
treasons, the false currency of feminine friendship, were 
not to Gabrielle’s fancy. She merely nodded ignorance. 

“ D’Avan9on ! ” cried Casal, obliged to answer his own 
question. “You must admit that for a first visit it was 
hardly an overwhelming attraction. To mend matters, 
the dear old man treated me to a mouthful of his best 
bitter aloes — hauled me over the coals without any mercy. 
Imagine the attack on my reputation made as soon as I 
bowed myself out. Madame de Tilli^re will refuse to bow 
to me the next time we see each other in the Bois ! ” . . . 

“ And what would that matter to your lordship ? ” smiled 
Gabrielle, slyly. 

“ What would it matter to me ? Is it a pleasant thing 
to be pointed out as a sort of medley between a monkey 
and a jockey, with a little touch of the wild boar thrown 
in as a make-weight ? I give you my word of honor, 
that was the impression this Parisian Polonius meant to 
convey.” 

“ What did you say to it all ? ” 


“ Give Him an Inch. 


S7 


“ Oh ! I couldn’t well seem put out, could I, consider- 
ing it was ray first visit, with a friend of the house ? But 
will you do me a good turn. Countess ?” 

“ I think I see you,” laughed Gabrielle. “ I must tell 
Juliette that you deserve a better halfpenny-worth of tar 
than that ! But you have yourself to blame. Why do 
you not oftener — I should rather say, sometimes — look 
in as you pass by ? Why do you spend twenty-three 
hours out of the twenty-four with a band of gamblers 
buffoons, libertines, adventuresses, who are clinging on to 
your coat-tails only to drag you down to demoralization ? 
Why do you not tell me,” she added, seriously, “ that all 
this has nothing to do with me ? ” 

“Ah ! madame,” said Casal, feelingly, taking her hand 
and warmly kissing it ; “ if there were only a few more 
women in society like you ! ” . . . 

“ Allans ! ” said she, tearing her hand from his embrace, 
and shaking her finger ; “ you flatter me without rhyme or 
reason. ... It is your wish that I should find you an oc- 
casion to justify yourself with my pretty friend, after the 
mud shower-bath Monsieur D’Avanpon treated you to t 
Very well, come and pay me a visit in my box at the 
Opera, to-morrow, Friday.” 

“But what if Juliette is angry with me for inviting 
Casal ? ” thought Gabrielle, after he was gone. . . . 
“ How foolish of me. Was she not put out the other 
evening, when he disappeared 1 Why, she will be only 
too delighted. And if she amuses herself a little while 
her politician is away, where is the harm ? At any rate, 
he is free to marry. Marriage — Casal ? Casal married ! 
What an idea ! . . . But why not ? He is rich, well-re- 
lated, young — young in heart, despite his indifferent life 


88 


tVas It Lovet 


and worse reputation. Did he not speak prettily of 
her just now, almost with a blush ? What has the boy 

missed ? Nothing but decent influences But what 

will De Poyanne think when he hears of these double 
meetings, one after another ? . . . What does it matter 
to anybody what Poyanne thinks ? ” 

In spite of this fine chain of reasons, and even though 
this hypothetical offer of marriage continued to float 
through her mind, it was with small assurance on Friday 
night that the Countess said to Juliette in the closed car- 
riage that was taking them to the Opera : 

“ A propoSy I forgot. ... I have invited Casal into our 
box. That will not put you out ? ” 

“ Why should it ? ” answered Juliette. 

The words were few and simple, but there was a little 
tremor in them that did not escape Gabrielle’s fine ear, 
knowing as she did the inflections of her friend’s voice. 
She waited for some reference to the visit of the Rue 
Matignon, but in vain. Juliette’s embarrassment and 
silence showed anything but indifference to the man she 
had only seen twice. Since the visit she had, in fact, done 
nothing but think of Casal ; but with profound loyalty to 
the Count, she had set up side by side with the image of 
the new-comer in her mind the memory of her accepted 
lover. “ How glad I am,” she thought, “ that I received 
the other coolly. He will never call here again. It 
would have been so awkward to have to tell Henry all 
about him in my letters. He is so hard on the poor man. 
And D’Avan9on harder still.” She remembered the ex- 
diplomatist’s tirade. “ I do not believe his detractors 
tell the truth. 

“ No, they do not tell the truth. Gabrielle sees things 


“ Give Him an Inch.” 


89 


more clearly. He has been brought up to pluck the flow- 
ers of evil. . . . He has had nobody to love him.” . . . 
[Juliette was treading on very dangerous ground. ] “ No- 
body to love ! What a pity it all is ! . . . But what can 
be done ? How lucky I have not got to meet him again. 
He would have begun to play at making love to me. 
Even his visit, so soon, and without an invitation, was 
hardly the correct thing. But I must say he behaved 
admirably, and D’Avan^on abominably. If he had 
found me alone, I wonder, I wonder^ how the interview 
would have ended.” 

At this interjected idea a little shiver of fear crept 
round her heart. 

“ Why should I think of such things ? It is all over. 
He will never call again.” . . . 

And now this most imprudent bosom friend of Juliette’s 
was leading her straight into the lion’s den ! 

“ But I thought,” said she, hastily, “ that you seldom 
or never saw Monsieur Casal except at hunt dinners ? ” 

“ True enough,” smiled Gabrielle. “All the same, he 
came to see me yesterday, and he looked — miserable ! ” 

“ What about ? ” asked Juliette. 

“ Did he not call upon you as well ? ” put in Madame 
de Candolle, “ and was not D’Avanfon with you ? ” 

“ I do not see the connection,” said Juliette, put out of 
countenance to find that Gabrielle knew of Casal’s visit 
to the Rue Matignon. 

“ Simple enough ! ” returned the Countess. “ It seems 
that D’Avan^on whipped him over hill and dale.” 

“You know the poor man’s way,” cried Juliette, affect- 
ing to laugh ; “ he is jealous, as men of his age come to 
be, and new faces please him not.” 


90 


Was It Level 


“Anyhow, Casal went away with the idea that you had 
breathed in a most horrible opinion of him ; and he came 
to me to pour out his sorrows to a sympathetic ear. . . . 
You have frightened him out of his wits, I assure you. I 
wish you could have seen him, with his boy talk : ‘ Do 
take my part with your friend.’ Go away v/ith you ! 
You would have been as sorry for him as I was. ... I 
have asked him to-night so that he may take his own 
part, by the only method in his power. . . . What 
would you have ? You know how much I am interested 
in him. I think it is a shame to see a man of so much 
promise fall into the clutches of people fathoms beneath 
him. And as he seems to be of our opinion, why not 
try to draw him up into our world ? Isn’t that your idea 
of Christian charity ? ” 

Juliette answered evasively. She could not, would not, 
show Gabrielle the nervous excitement the proposed visit 
was causing her. It is possible that, without knowing it, 
% she had hoped Casal might turn up. She tried to think to 
the contrary, and yet knew that, in the midst of her strange 
terror, the thought that she would see her visitor again 
so soon was not displeasing. 

The Countess, trying to justify her invitation, had un- 
wittingly used the most insinuating line of argument 
she could have invented, for with a romantic woman the 
phrases “ What a pity ! ” and “ What a shame it is ! ” go 
very far. Especially when they chimed so well with 
Juliette’s own reflections. It was through the little rift 
of pity in her heart that her first affection for Henry de 
Poyanne had percolated, which, slowly growing, let in the 
flood of love before she was aware. 

The thought that Casal was now suffering tortures of 


r 


“ Give Him an Inch." 


91 


remorse, and all the rest of it, for the disorders of his life, 
and that better influences might draw the unfortunate 
back to happier days — what a prospect, what a temptation, 
to try and constitute herself this influence ! Not that 
these thoughts passed through Juliette’s troubled mind in 
so many words, but she listened to her conscience : 

“ This time I shall not be able to conceal from Poyanne 
that I have seen Casal ! ” 

It was Juliette’s habit, whenever the Count was absent 
from Paris, to inscribe him every night a sort of letter 
diary of her life and of her thoughts. As she entered the 
De Candolle box, this was the last thought that was upper- 
most in Juliette’s mind. 

There he was, with De Candolle and D’Artelles, scan- 
ning the Opera House through his glasses. As he rose to 
salute her there was nothing of that expression in his eyes 
of one who wishes to signify, “ You see, I have managed 
to meet you again in spite of all you could do,” but, on 
the contrary, rather a timid, suffering look. Since Ma- 
dame de Candolle’s invitation, this master of the Parisian 
ceremonies hardly knew his own reflection in the glass. 
Instead of evaporating, his inquietude grew denser. He 
said to himself, spite all experience, “ Madame de Til- 
liere will be truly disgusted to see me here. She will 
think I am foisting my presence on her ; and if D’Avan9on 
laid the last straw on my reputation, I am a lost man.” 

This anxiety changed into something like torture when 
she swept past him, to take her place in front of the com- 
modious box, gracious, chilly, and gently distant. What 
a change in those eyes and that face, that betrayed such 
welcome confusion at sight of him the day before ! 

For the first time the full evidence of the sentiment 


92 


Was It Love 1 


that dominated his once frivolous mind confronted Ray- 
mond Casal. 

It was no longer a question of amusing himself with a 
flirtation. 

Casal was in love. 

As he himself inelegantly phrased it, dropping into his 
habitual slang : 

“ It is all up with me. Je suis ^ pinci' ! ” 

The opera was “ Hamlet,” by Ambroise Thomas, 
rather poorly represented. The fine singer who played 
Ophelia was surrounded by a company of third-rate ar- 
tistes ; and Casal could hear criticisms whispered round, 
such as : “ Oh ! what a villanous Player King ! I wonder 
how the Player Queen could poison her husband for 
such a man.” ... “ Who is that in Madame Bonnivet’s 

box ? Saint-Luc, by all that’s gracious ! ” . . . “I want 
to know if that is an actor now on the stage, or a 
ghost. ”... “Of course, a singer and an actor. Does he 
not move his mouth and his feet ? ” “ Look, in Madame 

Komoff’s box, there is the Princess Moranini. Is she not 
beautiful?” “As a model for a wax-doll, dear boy, 
do you mean ? ” “ Look at poor Ophelia ; no wonder 

she went mad with such a tuneless Hamlet ! ” and so 
on. 

Then these diamond-crowned sphinxes, so startling an 
array of splendor and beauty to the eyes of the student, 
tutor, or provincial who has come out in full evening 
dress for that occasion only, with the disconcerting 
contradictoriness that makes the Parisian woman a mira- 
cle of changeability, would suddenly cease flapping their 
fans, and, programme in hand, set themselves to follow 


“ Give Him an Inch." 


93 



the music and dwell upon the situation. Of a sudden 
the house is hushed, and the stop, the diapason of the 
human heart, that the composer wished to touch with his 
melodious wand is thrilled at last. It is Ophelia's great 
scene, and Madame de Candolle whispers for herself and 
for her friends : 

“ Listen ! ” 

The audience was silent. 

In this fourth act of “ Hamlet ” there is a celestial bal- 
lad, the air of which, so they say, the French composer 
borrowed from a sweet old folk-song of Brittany. Un- 
ceasing weird and plaintive harmonies of happiness lost 
and home unfound seem to haunt Ophelia throughout 
this scene, while at her side gently sing and softly dance 
V the other occupants of the stage. It is the ever-vivid 
contrasts similar to those distinguished in real life, of 
gayety struggling for precedence with melancholy, of 
tears smoothing away the wrinkles of laughter, that affect 
the imagination and focus the attention of the most care- 
less on what is passing on the boards. 

Thousand-spangled spring is with us, the kindly azure 
showers fresh life on every head of clover, the eyes of 
lovers are jewelled with the pearls of joy. Every mouth 
is a-smile to drink in the placid influences of the day and 
of the hour ; all but the deserted girl respond to the lovely 
pristine melody of nature. 

Then speaks the cruel prince : “ Get thee to a nunnery 
-go!” 

Through the golden mist of others’ heart-sunshine, 
Ophelia’s own irreparable wretchedness looms intolerably 
black. 

“ Ah ! ” she sighs out in song : 



94 


IVas It Lovel 


“ Heureuse I’epouse au bras de I’e'poux ! ” 

(“Oh, happy wife upon her husband’s arm ! ”) 

and with a sob more plaintive than Eurydice’s, her reason 
vanishes forever. 

But, no ; she argues it is impossible that she has been 
betrayed. The prince, her prince ; Hamlet, her Hamlet, 
lives, and all will yet be well. Lonely now, away from 
him, like a lily bruised and waterless, it seems to her, after 
all, that Hamlet must be really dead. 

She walks to the sad flood that flows and flows, and 
offers such a gentle couch to rock her brain to blank ob- 
livion, All you happy ones, for each of whom she has 
plucked a flower from her bouquet, and a sweet speech 
from her heart, do not stand in her way ! | Let her fatal 
footsteps still trend to the shining water, less deceitful 
than the heart of man, less unstable than hope, less fugi- 
tive than the hour of joy ; there let her drown her mem- 
ory of happy, happy days ; drown, though it has a soul, 
her own imperishable love, “ Adieu, adieu ! ” she gasps 
to Hamlet’s remembrance — “adieu, my only friend!” 
Let life continue to laugh around her limpid grave, and 
spring to be a spendthrift of its gleams and its perfumes. 
The suffering spirit sleeps for evermore. 


The strange and piercing charm of the music was that it 
seemed to hold the symbolism of all these sentiments as 
it were in a magnificent trance. This grand tone-poem, 
therefore, pleased the most diverse intellects. As the 
simple and beautiful motive of the ballad fainted away, 
only to be replaced by innumerable chime-shadows of 
itself, the groupings on the stage appeared to express all 



CASAL AND JULIETTE AT THE OI’EKA. 


t 



“ Give Him an Inch." 


95 


the complexity of the situation, and Ophelia’s distraction 
leaping out of chaos seemed to crystallize in strange but 
glittering angles of new sympathy. Curious as the state- 
ment may seem, every one of the occupants of the Count- 
ess’s box experienced an emotion differing from that of 
the others, but in harmony with the theatrical impression. 
Gabrielle, who had only to turn her head to behold Ma- 
dame Bernard, her rival, retraced in the last sigh of Ophe- 
lia a little of the pain that clouded all her life. Into 
Juliette’s heart the melody poured like a flood of invisible 
tears, sweeping away her bitter resolutions to keep Casal 
at bay. Casal himself, already carried off his feet by the 
romantic influence of a first love at thirty-six, for the first 
time forgot his quillets about the price of operatic noise, 
and let his soul float out into the hereafter on Ophelia’s 
drowning trills. So near the object of his newly awak- 
ened respect and affection, he felt his spirits rise with the 
music to a state of ecstasy in contemplation of a fairy fut- 
ure, So near to her, with her fair hair gathered into a 
Psyche knot on top of her shapely head, her expressive 
throat nearly as white as the plaits of her white robe that 
served to continue the line of beauty, her classical profile 
now lighted with the vivid glow of admiration, with the 
subtile aroma of Persian lilies that surrounded her — so 
near and still so far from friendship. 

Yet he saw, and noted, that she was at that moment 
one in spirit with himself. 

Could he but have said a single word to her at that 
instant, he would have been able to find out whether or 
not her sentiments were caged, whether or not the inter- 
est she had shown for him at each previous interview had 
wilted, and was dead and buried. 


96 


Was It Love ? 


But could that happen in so short a time ? 

The door of the box opens, the enchantment of the 
stage illusion vanishes. It is Mos^, who cordially grasps 
De Candolle’s hand, and Madame de Candolle rises to 
talk to the new arrival ; they sat together at the back in 
animated conversation. 

And now De Candolle and D’Artelles stroll out. It is 
Casal’s one opportunity. 

“ Will she rise from where she is ? ” thinks Ray- 
mond. 

And Juliette is thinking, “ It is my duty to avoid even 
five minutes of half tite-h-tete with this man. ” 

But she remained in her fauteuil, affecting to scrutinize 
the house anew through her lorgnette. 

In the mirror that garnished the back of the box she 
had caught a glimpse of Casal’s face, dark with the emo- 
tion of a lover’s dread, and Juliette felt all her tender- 
ness of the first interview revive in her at sight of that 
naturally haughty face now drawn and set with timidity, 
the sentiment of all others that disarmed her suspicions 
and called her heart from home. Her nerves, still throb- 
bing with the recent music, rendered any exertion of 
her will unusually difficult, and wuth her whole soul at at- 
tention, for which even at that supreme moment she w^as 
sorry, she remained. 

Casal was speaking to her. It was now too late to rise. 
How could she affront her friend-’s guest by not replying 
to him ? And why should she ? 

“ The act was lovely,” said Raymond, “ and for its sake 
I can almost forgive the composer for laying hands on 
‘Hamlet,’ although I hate to see the grand old plays 


Give Him an Inch." 


97 


made mincemeat of by new musicians. You ought to 
see this play of Shakespeare’s in London, played by 
Henry Irving. Have you seen him act, madame ?” 

“ I have never been in England,” answered Juliette ; 
and she thought, deliciously : “ Gabrielle was quite right ; 
I overawe him. Why ? ” 

Casal’s reserve lulled Juliette’s conscience. Proof of 
how she charmed him, he continued to pour into her 
willing ear accounts of the great English actor, criticising 
in the most friendly way, his speech as always to the 
point, his gestures everywhere suitable, his intelligence 
ever adequate. He ceased ; and with a smile : 

“Admit, madame, that you think it a little absurd for 
a man like me to come out as a dramatic critic ! ” 

“Why should that be.?” asked Juliette. A fresh fear 
clutched her heart-strings. She was assuring herself that 
every phrase brought on a more familiar, and that the 
conversation was growing more dangerous every mo- 
ment. 

“ Why ? ” responded Casal. “ Why, if not side by side 
of the true portrait of me painted by Monsieur d’Avan- 
9on the other day ? ” 

“ I did not pay the least attention,” said she, fanning 
herself in order to conceal her emotion. “ I had such a 
headache ! . . . Whither will he lead our words ? ” she 
thought. 

“ Yes,” sighed Casal with a melancholy which was only 
half theatric. “ But the first day that you are free from 
headache you will listen to him, and you will believe 
him, or somebody else with the same set of arguments. 
. . . I told Madame de Candolle yesterday, it is rather 
hard to be judged all one’s life by the follies of one’s 
7 


98 


Was It Lovet 


youth. ... And it had seemed to me. ... You will 
allow me to speak frankly ? ” . . . 

She inclined her head. 

He had presented this crucial dilemma to her with an 
almost childish grace of expression, a moving contrast 
when displayed to a woman by such a masculine man as 
Raymond Casal. He went on : 

“I thought ... it seemed to me . . . that you were 
not altogether pleased to have me in your house. It is 
true, you have not told me not to come.” 

“ But,” said Juliette, paralyzed by this method of fence 
that she was unable to understand in advance, “ it is you 
who would be bored with my hospitality. I live in a 
little corner of the world far enough from all that could 
possibly be of interest \.o you." 

^“You observe!” cried Casal, “you listened to the 
Public Prosecutor in spite of your poor head ! Well, I 
would like to hear from your own lips your authorization 
that I should sometimes be seen in the Rue Matignon, if 
it is only to try and make you alter your opinion on the 
case. That will be only fair ? ” 

Casal at this moment was so handsome, his dilated eyes 
sparkling with hope and the multitudinous gleam of the 
great chandeliers, this conversation had been so swiftly 
pushed to a conclusion, that Juliette answered in her own 
despite : 

, “ It will always give me great pleasure to see you.” 

It was the tritest phrase. But rendered thus, in re- 
sponse to Casal’s demand, and after Madame de Tilliere 
had promised herself to be so exceedingly discreet, this 
little invitation amounted to a weakness. 

The highly emotional way in which Raymond Casal 


“ Give Him an Inch." 


99 


murmured his thanks caused Juliette to comprehend in 
what light the young man interpreted her cession. 

At last she felt the strength to rise and join Alfred 
Mose and the Countess. 

It was too late. 




VI. 

THE FLOWERY SLOPE. 


“When pleasure calls we seldom count the cost — 

And in its tangled copses soon are lost.” 

—Kirke White. 

It was Juliette’s custom of a night, when all the house 
was still and there was no one to disturb her, to takei^ pen 
in hand and write the diary of the day in letter form to 
Henry de Poyanne, her sweetheart. 

On the evening after the scene described at the Opera 
she was seated at her own desk in her bedroom, sur- 
rounded by the welcome furniture and curious knick- 
knacks of her youth, by the portraits of father and 
mother, and photographs of friends — nothing to divert 
her attention but the monotony of the ticking clock 
and the pleasant purring of the lessening wood-flames, 
except, perhaps, the patter of the April rain ; yet" she found 
it hard indeed to make a beginning, 

Juliette had the genius for correspondence which is 
daily disappearing from our ill-considered habits ; there 
was a constant exchange of little notes between herself 
and friends, now in reference to some misunderstood 
phrase, again an inquiry about each other’s health, an 
account of some new book or work of art, or simply in 
regard to some small commission. These myriad trifles 


The Flowery Slope. 


lOI 


^give women an excuse for embroidering the gray dead- 
level of worldly life with the fond flowers of most gra- 
cious fantasy. To her friends, to her promised husband, 
whenever the political exigencies of the day took him 
away from Paris, she was in the habit of covering inter- 
minable sheets, letting her pen glide over the smooth 
paper in a vain attempt to catch the flying thoughts. 
To-night all seemed different. Her reflections refused 
to precipitate themselves in black and white — in fact, 
they appeared obscure, if not indeed entirely formless. 

Should she tell Henry of Casal, of the request that he 
had made, and of her answer ? 

“ I owe it to him to do so,” she cried aloud ; and with 
an expression of firmness she began to write. At the 
expiration of half an hour she had covered a dozen 
sheets with a true and particular account of the simple 
events of the evening ; of the encounter with Raymond 
Casal at the Opera, of the essentials of their conversation, 
and she concluded by saying that if this young man's 
presence in her house was disagreeable to Henry, a word 
from him would give her the cue to put a veto to his 
visits. 

The letter finished, she re-read it, and mentally beheld 
Poyanne, in his turn, perusing it. She knew him far too 
well to doubt his answer. It was the grace of Henry's 
generous and nature-moulded mind that he aimed to 
rule in Juliette’s heart by love, and not authority. He 
was one of those delicate lovers who virtually give their 
sweethearts their entire freedom from the first. Sus- 
tained, as they are, by the loftiest motives, these gallant 
men have sometimes to suffer for their kindness, for the 
footsteps of the women they allow thus to come and go 


102 


Was It Love ? 


at their sweet will not infrequently trample their own 
affections in the dust. Their hearts bleed inwardly, 
without a plaint, and this mute suffering but vents itself 
in tender looks. 

“ What good to send him such a letter ? ” she exclaimed. 
“ I will not send it.” And then she threw the crumpled 
papers in the blaze, and watched the writhing folds con- 
sume in fitful sparks, and felt within her as one feels who 
has committed the first treason against righteous love. 

But she was loath to relinquish her pretty habit of letting 
her confidences trickle over the inkstand, and once more 
she beg^n to write, this time without mentioning Casal’s 
name — pages filled with not very interesting or original 
matter, picked up she knew not where or how, and hur- 
riedly sealed the new letter in its envelope, as though it 
had been a sort of tame scorpion, that might accidentally 
sting her if she was not careful. 

“ I know not why a trifling thing like this should worry 
me,” she thought the next morning, in order to lull her 
conscience. “What earthly harm can there be in receiv- 
ing a man who is the friend of Gabrielle and Madame 
d’Arcole ? By what pretext could I have denied him his 
request to be allowed the common privilege of calling 
here? Gabrielle was right. He is only obeying a senti- 
ment that does him honor. Monsieur Casal wishes to pro- 
test against the effect of D’Avan9on’s harangue on me — or 
any woman in my place. It is equivalent to a pledge of 
good behavior here, and that he will not fall a-courting 
me. . . . Visits, from time to time, that will but make him 
more respect the better portions of his character. . . . 
Even Henry himself would approve of them, if he knew 
their source, and I could pour their explanation in his ear. 


The Flowery Slope. 


103 


Besides,” she continued, glancing at a letter received from 
Besan9on that very morning, “ he is not troubling his 
head much just now about my concerns.” 

The Count’s letter from his native town merely gave 
the story of his journey and arrival, and of the election- 
eering struggle that was going on. It looked as if he had 
purposely eliminated every sentimental subject. This 
timid lover, (fearful of fatiguing his fiancee by too much 
tenderness^, had himself written one, two, three letters, and 
destroyed them, in order to send her at the last a missive 
that would read indifferent. Juliette ought to have di- 
vined these scruples of the man she knew so well. But 
how seldom we give others the credit of having a soul 
as susceptible as our own ! 

She sighed and told herself : 

“ How he has changed ! His letters used to be so full 
of love ! ” 

She folded up the Count’s clear and loyal handwriting, 
and slipped the sheets into their envelope and locked 
them sadly in her cedar desk. In her tender cult of the 
man whom she very justly considered as one of the great 
figures of the epoch, she had a pious way of taking care 
of all his notes and letters. (^The diminution of the love 
that was between them made Juliette very thoughtful.^ 
Mechanically she arranged the flowers that General de 
Jardes, v/ho was travelling in Italy, had that morning sent 
her, dreaming of all the past. Red and white half-blown 
roses, tired with the journey ; pale narcissus, drooping for 
the want of air ; golden mimosa, pinks white and scarlet, 
Russian violets, mingled their sweet odors to please her, 
scarcely heeded. These poor flowers, still alive, revived 
with water, and as if in gratitude breathed out their souls 


104 


IVas It Love 7 


afresh in perfume, commingling, as no artificial scents 
will blend, into a breeze of Arcady that semi-consciously 
wafted Juliette’s dreams to the land of sunshine and en- 
chantment — Italy. 

Stirred, still, by reflex waves of the profound emotion 
of the evening before, this invisible floral aroma flattered 
her, and superadded to her vague thoughts a strange and 
dreamy languor. 

There are moments when our sympathy with flowers of 
the field and garden transcends pleasure, and penetrates 
the region of creative joy. 

The bell rang. Juliette, with a start, lifted her eyes 
from admiration of these chef -d' oeuvres of heaven’s handi- 
work, to reflect : What if Casal should take advantage of 
my weak permission and walk in now, to find me in this 
state of agitation ? 

He would be asking this and that. . . . What should 
she answer ? Happily, the open door displayed, not Ray- 
mond Casal, but Monsieur d’Avan^on. So much was he 
occupied with some idea of his own that he remarked 
neither Madame de Tilli^re’s pallor nor her trembling 
hands, nor the(eloquent wet brightness of her eyes, those 
faithful Mercuries of love and fear.j 

“ He is going to tease me about my last night at the 
Opera ! ” she told herself, after her first feeling of deliv- 
erance. And she went on patting the flowers into admired 
disorder with her soft white fingers, now almost gayly, 
glancing from her half-turned face appreciation of the 
conversational effects the old beau was so evidently full 
of. She knew him so well ! . . . 

One of his whims, she knew of old, was never to ap- 
proach his point save by a roundabout. He thought it 


The Flowery Slope. 




due to his old trade of diplomacy to fend and fiddle 
with his thoughts as he brilliantined and cosmetiqued his 
scanty hairs, plastering each one in its place till his old 
skull was hirsute vv^ith black wax, then variegating his 
prickly mustache till it assumed the pepper and salt of 
middle age. At the beginning of an interview he would 
let slip a phrase which, half an hour later, would serve 
him as a graceful stepping-stone to his chief sentence. It 
did not take him quite so long to-day. Madame de Til- 
liere was only half mistaken. It was indeed his inten- 
tion of lugging in Casal. But D’Avangon was not aware 
of the events of the Opera. Juliette had handed him a 
large lemon-tinted anemone, glory of the sunny south, 
and was saying : 

“ You have not praised my flowers. It was the General 
who had the thoughtfulness to send them.” 

“ And will he soon be back ? ” asked the diplomatist. 
“ Or do you think he will push on to Monte Carlo to try 
his fortune at the rouge et noir I ” 

“ It is quite on the cards that he may,” said Juliette. 

“ That reminds me,” put in D’Avan^on, with an eager- 
ness to step this fine plank of chatter which was a sure 
proof that he had set it up on end himself, “ that I wit- 
nessed at the Rue Royale last night one of the biggest 
deals out of Bedlam. ... You accuse me of being hard 
on Monsieur Casal. Do you know how much he lost at a 
sitting, between half-past twelve and one o’clock ? Give 
it a name ! What, you decline to guess 1 AVell, three 
thousand louis ! . . . What do you think of that I No 
doubt he was fresh from one of the English bars where he 
and his friend Lord Bohun are in the habit of soaking the 
remnants of their brains in Irish whiskey, for the baron 


io6 


Was It Love! 


was asleep on a sofa, and our monsieur looked extremely 
jolly. And then these young slips of Apollyon get into 
a temper when their elders, on rare occasions, try to 
instil into them a little sense ! ” 

“ But is Monsieur Casal so rich ? ” asked Juliette. 

“ His income was two hundred and fifty thousand 
francs when he came of age. With his questionable gen- 
erosities, it is another matter, doubtless, nowl ” 

It was a genuine triumph to D’Avan9on to be able, 
with this pretty little anecdote, to prove to Juliette that 
his accusations were not to be regarded as so many 
calumnies. He continued holding forth against high 
play, believing fully that while his fair friend continued 
posing the vases of flowers and flitting about the room 
she was grievously touched at his recital. 

“ So, after leaving me at the Opera,” she thought, “he 
turned to wine and cards ? ” In her opinion nothing 
could be simpler. Was she not well aware that Casal, 
like so many young men of the day, passed a great part 
of several evenings of the week at his club ? Why did 
the idea of this now seem so hateful to her ? Did she 
imagine that a few words exchanged with a man in a 
box at the theatre was going to change his habits by 
magic on account of words that had no earthly bearing 
on his ways of life ? Had it been her secret inmost wish 
that he would retain so lively an impression of their con- 
versation as to prevent him from profaning what was left 
of the night ? 

During all the rest of the day Juliette could not throw 
off these images of the disorderly life of the man about 
whom she knew as yet so little. She began to feel the 
growth of this strange temptation to be something nearer, 


The Flowery Slope. 


107 


if not dearer, to him, under the pretence, at once specious 
^nd dangerous, of becoming his good angel. Thus was the 
foundation planned by Gabrielle de Candolle serving for 
a stately superstructure in the mind of Juliette. In his 
feeble attempt to hurt Casal’s reputation, D’Avangon was 
furnishing these two beings, already so preoccupied with 
thoughts of one another, with %safe and common ground 
of communion. The most discreet, the most reserved 
woman may take to task a viveur about his passion for 
play, while she could scarcely scold him on the drink 
question without reviling him, or animadvert on his gal- 
lantries without compromising herself. 

Thus when Casal, after the decent interval of two days, 
presented himself in the little Louis XVI. salon, his visit 
had been looked forward to with an amount of happy 
hope that Juliette had hardly dared to recognize. Ma- 
dame de Tilliere pretended then no headache, and no 
longer wore one of those fair, filmy robes that are the 
semi-consolation of the sick ; she was in walking dress, 
and with her blond hair rolling freely underneath her 
bonnet, she had that youthful smile, those eyes at once 
candid but penetrating, soft yet sprightly, which formed 
her unique charm in presence of those to whom she con- 
descended to unveil her inner nature. 

Absorbed with precognitions of the things she was about 
to say, two velvety rose cloudlets glowed on her smooth 
cheeks, and her sapphire eyes sparkled with a vivacity 
that Casal had never seen in them before, as she said, 
after the first civilities were over : 

“ You want it thought that people tell untruths about 
you, yet you pass your evenings at the card-table. Do not 
tell me that it is not so ! I have my secret police. You 


io8 


Was It Love! 


lost, sir, more than sixty thousand francs on Saturday 
morning between twelve and one ! ” 

“ But by two o’clock the same morning I had won them 
all back again, with thirty thousand francs to boot ! ” cried 
Casa], laughing. 

“ Oh ! that’s still worse ! ” exclaimed Juliette, and then, 
conformably with her programme of Platonic friendship, 
she began a graceful little lecture, to which Raymond 
listened with a compunction that was only half-feigned 
— this scandalous and dashing Casal, who had viewed with 
complacency at the club, nay, at the drinking-bar, twenty 
times in his life, losses or winnings amounting to a hundred 
thousand francs ; Casal, the master-spirit with apprentice 
libertines, the man whose flowers of evil the water-gilt 
youth of the period too proudly imitated for their moral 
buttonholes ! 

If they could see him now — these fire-eaters of Lutetia, 
who w'ould drink themselves silly at Phillips’s in order to 
have a chance of a chat with ce diable de Casal — seated 
vis-a-vis to a young and charming woman, listening hum- 
bly and patiently to a discourse on the elements of propri-x^ 
ety ! 

“ If I could subscribe for a quiet hour’s talk with you 
for an hour a day, madame, I would gladly pay the price 
of abstention from the gambling- table for twelve months ! ” 

“ Pay your fine now, sir, all the same ! ” cried Madame 
de Tilli^re, with an air that was not all coquettish. 

“ It is your wish ! ” replied Casal, in so solemn a tone 
that Juliette suddenly realized how far, without taking 
heed, she had travelled sideways on the slippery slide of 
familiarity. It was altogether too late to draw back ; so 
she made a virtue of necessity. 


The Flowery Slope. 


109 


“ Oh ! for a year ? That would be asking you too much. 
Suppose you begin with three months.” 

“ You have my word of honor ! ” cried Raymond, in a 
meaning tone. “ April, May, June — from now to the 
middle of July I will not touch a pack of cards ! ” • 

“ ‘ We shall see what we shall see,’ ” said Juliette, 
lightly. Then, so that this promise, formulated with all 
ceremony, should not constitute the link between them of 
a secret, she added : 

“ This will give ever so much pleasure to a certain lady 
I breakfast with to-morrow. You cannot guess who it 
is ? I mean the Countess Gabrielle. I will carry the oath 
to her warm from the oven.” 

Madame de Tilliere had no sooner pronounced these 
words than she comprehended their danger, and after 
the young man had taken his departure it was clear to 
her that she had been exceedingly unwise. 

Would he not take this phrase as an implied rendezvous, 
and what would he think of such a line of conduct ? She 
had an idea of writing to Gabrielle, as a precaution, to put 
off the breakfast to another day. But she could hardly do 
so. The morrow was the anniversary of the day when, 
as girls, she and Madame de Candolle had first met ; they 
had adopted the pretty habit of breakfasting with each 
other alternately every year as the day came round, and 
of exchanging graceful presents. They loved these oc- 
casions of haunting the magazines in search of charming 
novelties. They experienced a childish delight in the 
handling of a thousand bagatelles, natty as their own well- 
gloved hands, of luxury and of La Mode. 

“ Suppose,” said Juliette to herself, “ I ask Gabrielle to 
come here and breakfast with me. If he has any idea of 


no 


IVas It Love? 


getting himself invited to the Rue Tilsitt, he would think 
I am afraid of him. . . . But it won’t come into his 
head.” 

Such and like thoughts preoccupied her mind so much 
thal she ceased to give Henry de Poyanne a passing 
thought, until the hour came round once more to write 
him the compte rendu of the day. This time, without hesi- 
tation, she resolved to drop the name of Raymond Casal 
out of her communication. Already she accepted the 
compromise, or rather the dualism of conscience, repre- 
sented by a secret guarded from her lover. ^Not without 
a hidden remorse that made this letter no easier to indite 
than the missive of the preceding night, in spite of the 
sophistries with which she tried to soothe her nerves. 

“ Heavens ! ” she cried, as she finished, “ if this little 
V piece of harmless secrecy gives me such pain, I wonder 
how the women feel who deceive their husbands ! ” 

Juliette tried to persuade herself that it was not her 
wish to see Casal again so soon. In reality, when she ar- 
rived at the Rue Tilsitt, loaded with pretty presents for 
her bosom friend, if Juliette had not encountered Ray- 
mond she would have felt extremely disappointed. But 
she had reckoned too well the effects of her imprudent 
exclamation. 

The very first action of Raymond Casal, after quitting 
the Rue Matignon, was to direct his coachman to make a 
bee-line for the De Candolle mansion. He found the 
Countess examining a pile of rings and bracelets in their 
multi-colored satin cases, the latest things in jewellery 
perpetrated by the joint brains of Old Bond Street and 
the Rue de la Paix. 

“ A la bonne heure ! ” exclaimed the Countess. “ You 


The Flowery Slope. 


Ill 


are just in time to tell me which you like best of these,” 
pointing to two jewelled bangles, one with the word “re- 
member ” on it, in blue enamel, the other decorated with 
a tiny diamond-surrounded watch not so big as a half 
napoleon. , 

“ Mais celui-cip said Casal, pointing to the watch 
trinket, then a novelty, “ because of its double advan- 
tage. In the first place, it is a modest decoration ; then it 
is so convenient for taking leave. You see ” — he laughed 
his old gay laugh — “ a lady tires of her lover. She dares 
not consult the mantel clock to see if she may decently 
cut short the interview. All she has to do is to put her 
arm round her sweetheart’s neck, and crane her pretty 
head like this ” (imitating) “so as to read the time o’ day 
on her wrist.” 

“ The idea ! It is just like you ! ” exclaimed Gabrielle. 

“ You deserve to have your impudence repeated to the 
person the bracelet is meant for ; and so it shall be, to 
punish you, not later than to-morrow morning.” 

“ If you mean Madame de Tilliere,” hazarded Casal. 

“ See, if the clever fellow hasn’t guessed it the first time ! 
Well, if it is Madame de Tilliere ? ” 

“Then be good,” said Casal. “Repeat my imperti- % 
nence if you choose, but let me be on hand to counteract 
the plot.” 

“ Are you at liberty to-morrow morning ? Then come 
to breakfast ; but try and have the courage of my good 
opinion of you, for it is simply spoiling you with kindness 
to ask you on such a day.” 

Then Gabrielle made him sit down, and told him the 
history of the friendship between her and Juliette, to 
which Casal listened religiously. So well did he play his 


II2 


Was It Love ? 


part that, when the morrow came, the first person Juliette 
set eyes on in Gabrielle’s little salon was Raymond, Yes ! 
She would have been disappointed if he had not made an 
effort to see her thus again ; nor was she hypocritical 
enough to carry with her the long face with which she 
had received him on his first visit to the Rue Matignon. 
Successively, and in the best of faith, Juliette found her- 
self nursing a growing interest in Casal and his affairs, and 
again reminding herself of her love-duty to Henry de 
Poyanne ; so that now, side by side in her mind with each 
other, these two complex currents of feeling flowed on 
toward two different men. 

If Casal was ingenuous enough to take seriously the 
mute reproach of Juliette’s coolness to him this morning as 
a punishment for his pertinacity, all that Gabrielle saw in 
her friend’s behavior was a little comedy she was playing 
for the benefit of her conscience. Gabrielle was brim- 
ming with electric gayety as she took Raymond’s arm to 
go in to breakfast, while Juliette was left to De Candolle. 
It must be admitted that this little merry-making was one 
to which the ladies came prepared with a far better ap- 
petite than to dinners of ceremony. With the power of 
^ double-mindedness the novelists of to-day think they are 
the first to discover, Gabrielle, at once actress and audi- 
ence, was saying to herself pleasantly : 

“ My little Juliette is obstinate in her severity. She 
wishes us to think she is vexed that Raymond is one of 
us this morning. But, madame, to carry the play on your 
shoulders, you should get rid of the air of distraction 
your eyes betray, which shows me that while you are try- 
ing to listen to Louis’ attempt at fine talk, your whole 
attention is for ‘ our Casal.’ 


The Flowery Slope. 


“3 


“Suppose Juliette was to be really smitten with Ray- 
mond, and this marriage was to turn out a reality ! 

“ What a bugbear for a husband the Count would make ! 
And thus I get rid of him. As for Raymond, his tastes 
are those of Louis, of our set, our world — and we should 
all be happy together. 

“ As for Casal, he is wrapped up in her. 

“ Good ! she is beginning to unbend. He has said some- 
thing witty, and how his glances hinge upon her more 
and more ! He speaks to her. She answers. The tigress 
is a tame one, after all.” 

This little mute chorus was the accompaniment of a 
play of social converse that, regular in its irregularity, 
jumped from the Auteuil races to the sittings of the Corps 
Legislatif ; from the latest play to the latest “ wrinkle ” 
in high cookery ; and then, of course, the latest scandal ; 
till, at some given cue, De Candolle said to Raymond : 

“ I like your style of action last night, Casal. It is the 
first time I ever knew you to refuse to take the bank ; 
and against Machault, who always wins.” 

“ I am growing old,” answered Raymond, shrugging 
his shoulders ; “ getting sick and tired of cards.” 

“It is at least not an unreasonable caprice,” said 
Gabrielle. “ When does it date from, and how long will 
it continue ? ” 

“ It is not a caprice, madame, I assure you,” replied 
the young man, with the same sincerity he had given his 
word of honor with, the day before. This phrase, signifi- 
cant to Juliette only, sent a thrill through her every nerve. 
If Casal in so many words had said he loved her, she 
would not have experienced a more forcible emotion. 
She turned away her eyes for a minute, in order to mask 


IVas It Loitel 


H4 


the mingled sentiments that made them sparkle so, first 
amongst which was glad surprise. Taking the words for 
all they were worth, it was Julietta’s wisest cue to enfold 
herself thence onward in impenetrability. But from that 
moment to do so was beyond her strength. Giving this 
proof of his immediate reformation in virtue of the sister’s 
counsel received from Juliette, was not Casal flattering 
her, only too skilfully, for the good judgment she had 
displayed in lending him her ear so readily ? 

Above all, Raymond continued to please her infinitely 
well, thanks to the personal magnetism which discon- 
certs analysis, and seems almost to justify the harsh 
opinion of certain modern philosophers who think that 
most love comes within the laws of physical attraction. 
It was long after they had returned from the grand bil- 
liard room, where all four, in the modern fashion, had 
taken a hand in a game of English pool, before Juliette 
looked at the little watch, already at her wrist, that 
Gabrielle had given her with sweetest kisses, to see with 
astonishment how the hour-hand had galloped. 

“Three o’clock,” she cried, “already, and I ordered 
the carriage at two ! Allans— je me sauvel ” 

“ Will you wait for me ? ” said Gabrielle. “ I will go 
with you.” 

“Ah ! ” answered Juliette, putting on her bonnet at the 
looking-glass, “ how happy I should be if I had not prom- 
ised to drive round for Cousin de Nangay.” 

Juliette was astonished herself, as she went down the 
broad staircase, at this new untruth minted on the spur of 
the moment. Why, if not that she felt herself just then 
unable to bear the certain teasing of her friend ? The 
hidden burrs of conscience were hurting her too much. 


The Flowery Slope, 


”5 


According to custom, her footman, before quitting the 
Rue Matignon, had put in the carriage all letters that had 
come by the midday mail. Amongst three was one from 
De Poyanne. It was a long time before Juliette could 
summon courage to open it. She began to tell herself 
in real earnest that she was treating this absent lover of 
hers detestably. Through the spectacles of her remorse 
she saw him in exile at Besan^on, seated at table, writing 
to her after the terrible fatigues of the political day, in 
order to refresh his spirit at the fountain of her memory. 
All at once all those chords of tender admiration that had 
formerly riveted her mind upon the noble orator and 
statesman were sounded by the viewless touch of con- 
science. Her fingers trembled as she tore away the enve- 
lope. Perhaps at that instant, if she had encountered in 
the course of the letter a single phrase of love triumphant, 
it might have given her the force of mind and rectitude 
of soul to cast the shattered image of Casal to the four 
winds. 

But this new letter seemed gay in tone and almost care- 
less to her jaundiced eye. In this the Count had thought 
to please Juliette, but he had reckoned without his Casal. 
Not a word in the epistle vibrated sufficiently to reach the 
inner ear of his sweetheart. 

Alas for the misunderstandings of lovers' separations ! 
The woful, the irreparable wrongs the stupid sheets com- , 
mit, which we have not had the tact to impregnate with | 
love, the courage to enregister with tears. To write to 
the woman we love, after being many days absent, is, as 
it were, to talk to her behind a mask, through which we 
can see neither the expression of her face nor the en- 
couragement of her eyes ; it is to emit a flow of empty ^ 


ii6 


PFas It Love ? 


words, whose echo from the idolized one does not reach 
us — words that may, perhaps, result in losing her for- 
ever. 

•Juliette read the letter over twice, and each time cried: 
“ How he is changed ! ” 

It was not true ; and it was doubly dangerous for her to 
think so at the moment, cosseted and cabined as she was 
by the cobweb netting of a most cunning courtship. 

To be quite fair to this charming and generally prudent 
woman, we must allow that Raymond Casal had the tact, 
in the weeks following these encounters, before Poyanne’s 
return, to conduct himself with impeccable modesty. He 
knew precisely the present isolation of Madame de Til- 
liere's life. Nothing could exceed his delicacy. Nor 
was this finesse entirely, or even chiefly, the result of 
cold calculation. He was but giving his sincere emotions 
fair play. For Juliette, this was the very danger : Casal 
conducted himself toward her, under the impulse of his 
newly roused sensibilities, as though he had in fact been a 
diplomatist in love. 

In spite of a life sufficiently debasing, Raymond was 
naturally of a fine enough instinct, so much of an artist in 
sensations, to give in to all the charm of this Platonic 
commerce with Madame de Tilliere — entirely free, in this 
case, from the throes of self-love that distract so many 
lovers in the very presence of their idol. 

When a professional viveur becomes really amorous of 
a really good woman, his youth in part comes back to 
him again — an intoxicating form of rejuvenescence that 
lends him once again the hope and faith of early man- 
hood. Needless to say how flattering to the lady this 


The Flowery Slope. 


117 


strange phenomenon appears ! According to the admi- 
rable formula of the mediaeval philosopher, it shows how 
Jove grafts a new animal on the old animal of habit^ so 
much so that to be in love is to become another being 
for the time, to behave in diametrical opposition to one’s 
former ideals, to act as if the past were obsolete. 

Like all conversions, durable or short-lived, the reason 
of this juvenescence lies in the common laws of intellect. 
Every one of us has the imagination of his way of life. 
That is a necessary corollary to our daily habits, a law se- 
vere but just. If Juliette had been an ordinary woman, 
Casal would have taken her measure accordingly, for in 
judgment of the sex he was incomparably acute. That 
he elevated her on an alabaster pedestal of thought far 
above any woman he had ever met was at once a subtile 
flattery to Gabrielle, and a tribute to the widow which 
she could not choose but graciously acknowledge. 

Soon he found means to see her every day, and some- 
times twice, or even more, a day. They met at the Rue 
Matignon, at the De Candolles’, at the theatre, at picture- 
galleries, in the Bois. It was more especially in the little 
boudoir, with the quaint old hangings and effective pict- 
ures of the widow’s ancestors, that Casal best and most felt 
this passion of love and respect that Juliette had roused 
since he first made her acquaintance. 

Since the third visit and all those that followed, with 
the gracious trickery of womankind, Juliette had got into 
the way, with a simple smile or an innocent phrase, of re- 
minding Raymond of the platform on which they met ; 
so that at no time was he able to grow in familiarity, but 
had rather, on each visit, to make his footing good by 
some new trait of gentleness. Thus half their conversa- 


ii8 


JVas It Love 7 


tions at the house were taken up by Casal reconquering 
the ground that had otherwise been lost. 

On the rare occasions when Juliette abandoned herself 
to the passing charm of his society, sh'fe was careful to 
lower her eyes lest the fulness of her appreciation should 
be realized by Casal. She took to herself that best of 
. shields against a man indeed in love, the attitude that 
' nothing he could possibly say would affect her serenity. 

“ And is this I ? " Casal would think as he walked 
home, and bared his forehead to the passing breeze ; “ the 
man who mocked h*is comrades every time they ‘ fell in 
love,' who deemed the fall insane, absurd ? 

“ But one must admit that there is no one like her ! ” 

Then, because he was a man of wit, in spite of his 
emotion : “ It is the way they all talk, every one of 

them.” 

Then, after a very rataplan of doubt : “ No ! she is 
but little lower than the angels ; and as for me, I think I 
know myself. If this is love, I will be hospitable.” 

Casal’s favorite amusement, that of lovers since the 
beginning of the world, was to catalogue innumerable 
reasons why Juliette was so superior to her sex in gen- 
eral. A thing that heightened the intoxication of this 
romance was the fact that he was leading a double life. 
For he still frequented his club, the race-course, and the 
theatre, and did not seek to avoid any of his old friends. 
It thus seemed to him he had a multiplied personality, 
and to savor the sweet reflections of a lover in the hurt- 
ling of the vulgar rounded his life with placid poetry. 

Already a month had passed since the meeting at the 
Opera and Casal's timid request to pay a second visit to 


The Flowery Slope. 


119 


the Rue Matignon. It was ten o’clock in the morning. 
Raymond was in his dressing saloon in the Rue Lisbonne. 
On a marble table, by the side of his celebrated cabinet 
of boots and shoes, stood an open casket circled by a 
collarette of gleaming pearls. It was his parting present 
to Christine Anroux, the token of a long farewell. The 
thought of the actress had become insupportable to him. 

In a rocking-chair was seated Lord Herbert Bohun, 
ready dressed for a ride in the Bois with his old friend, 
flicking the carpet with his whip. Lord Bohun very 
seldom opened his mouth, as a rule, before lunch. On 
this occasion he condescended, telegraphically : “ Capital 
dinner, last night, Machault’s. Wouldn’t have taken 
twenty pounds for the thirst I had on me. Chateau Mar- 
gaux, white, good — ’69 Latour, better — grand old port, 
best of all. After that, Phillips’s. Finished the night 
on his abominable whiskey and worse water. Where the 
deuce were you ? ” 

As this terrible alcoholic maniac — remarkable for hav- 
y ing said one day in Sicily when there was a severe earth- 
quake : “ I didn’t think I was as drunk as that ! ” — was 

dilating on his night out, Raymond was sitting, mechanic- 
ally adjusting his “ four-in-hand,” lost in thought. He 
saw himself — at the very hour when Herbert Bohun was 
“sobering up ” on “bad whiskey and worse water ” — in 
the boudoir of the Rue Tilsitt, talking to Gabrielle and 
Juliette. What about ? He only remembers Juliette’s 
robe — the same rose satin, festooned with black lace, she 
wore the first night, the wonderful night of the dinner- 
party. 

What reminiscences live in dress ! 

And when Herbert insisted : 


120 


JVas It Lovel 


“ Six nights you’ve disappointed me. Some new flame, 
eh, Lothario ? ” 

“ On my word, no,” said Casal. “ I went to bed at 
eleven ; I v/as knocked up.” 

“It’s a big success,” said the other. “Fresh color, 
bright eyes, good condition. No doubt she appreciates. 
Are you ready ? ” 

The fact is, for years Casal had not looked such a jolt 
garpn as at that moment, never had the flame of physi- 
cal life burned more intently in him. Women of society, 
who had known Casal in days gone by, said to each other 
as they passed him on horseback : 

“ He is a marvel, yon Casal. Always five and twenty.” 

There was another reason for Raymond’s gayety, in 
addition to his perfect sense of health. The evening 
before he had caught an allusion made by Juliette to a 
projected shopping excursion in the Rue de la Paix, and 
he intended to watch for the well-known coupd. Tak- 
ing joy in such schoolboy antics is a sure sign of love in 
anybody over thirty-five — above all, when a man has led 
the life that Raymond had. 

Behold Casal prowling about, between the Place Ven- 
dome and the Avenue de I’Opera, like a countryman, look- 
ing into each shop-window. His heart beats fast as he 
recognizes Juliette through one. Entering, he has a stu- 
dent’s blush upon his face as he salutes her. But, as she 
does not seem annoyed, he hands her to her carriage, 
childishly happy, and so remains all afternoon. Pres- 
ently, as he fences in the club. Place Vendome, everybody 
will admire his play, while the habitues interlard their 
talk with strange arguments on the Italian method vs. 
French. All the while the fencer’s thoughts are of a 


The Flowery Slope. 


121 


fair woman bowing adieu from her carriage window ! 
Later on, as he visits Madame d’Arcole, on the off- 
chance that Juliette may do the same, his thoughts still 
point to certain lovely eyes, so softly tender that they 
madden him, so sternly reserved they make him tremble 
every time he thinks to tell his love. 

“ All the same, I am somewhat silly,” thought Casal. 
“Of two things, one : either she is a phenomenal flirt, or 
else she loves me. In either case I must take action. 
Every night, I say so ; every morning, I am once more 
slave to her sweet looks. I hardly know myself. 

“ Never have I met any one who is in the least like 
her. . . . When she is near me, I feel myself so little 
— little. And she ? . . . If I displeased her, do you 
think she would receive me, as she does, two or three 
times a week ? She knew I should be at the Duchess’s 
this evening. They invited her before my face. . . . 
Why was she not there ? 

“ To-day she had a sad look in her eyes. There was 
something on her mind. But I have hunted up her life. 
Nothing, not a shadow, to obscure her history. Why 
does she thus, all the time, seem to be reining herself in 
as if she struggled fiercely with her thoughts ? . . . It is 
all very simple, I think. She loves : she wishes not to 
love. ... I certainly will speak to-morrow.” 

Casal sleeps well on this appeasing certainty. His vast 
experience of women enabled him with a near aim to di- 
vine the truth as to Juliette’s feelings, but not the whole 
truth. That she hardly knew herself. 

But he was v/rong, entirely wrong, when he concluded 
that religious scruples, the wish to retain her worldly in- 
dependence, regard for reputation, or the faithfully kept 


122 


IVas It Love 7 


souvenir of a lost husband— that any of such things pro- 
duced this vacillation of the heart in Juliette ; by turns 
abandoning herself to sweetest thoughts, by turns a mon- 
ster of propriety. 

Unceasingly conscience tormented Madame de Tilliere^ 
thus tripping down the flowery slope of sentimental dal- 
liance far in advance of her discretion, till the revolv- 
ing weeks brought round the near return of De Poyanne. 
Now it v/as a fortnight off, and now ten days, a week — 
a whole, whole week ; . . . five days, and then he would 
be home, and Juliette would have to explain how it came 
about that she had taken to herself a new intimate — and 
what a man for intimate ! — without saying a word about 
him in her letters. And so at last, in the very mid-puzzle 
of so many uncertainties and procrastinations, so much 
innocent, or blameworthy, weakness, now two days of 
freedom only remain ; now one — and now but several 
hours. 

And oh ! but they are hard to go through, these last 
hours, in which the waiting on what she fears mingles so 
bitter^ with reroorse for what she had permitted. It 
would have been'^ so trivial, everything, had she but spo- 
ken. . . . To-morrow Henry will enter the little salon 
where Raymond sat so long yesterday. What shall she 
say to him ? . . . Why, when she had foreseen this crisis 
in the future from the very first evening, had she allowed 
things to come to such a pass of her own free will ? If 
she had to tell the absent one the truth, in what words 
would she transcribe the sentiment by means of which she 
justified actions — and secret actions — which, she knew, 
would seem so graceless to Poyanne ? 

Was she herself acquainted with these sentiments ? 


The Flawery Slope. 


123 


Did she now dare to look into her soul with her usual sin- 
cerity ? No. . . . She was too much afraid to discover 
something that all the while she knew she was hiding 
from herself. 

If she continued silent, could she hope that Henry 
fiever might discover that she had received Casal as a 
friend — if not in such intimacy as Mirant, D’Avan9on, 
and a few more, still as a friend ? 

“ As a lover ? ” 

She repeats these three words, wondering by what 
secret influence impelled she has allowed day to succeed 
day, one drawing another in its wake, till she has been 
tossed into this whirlpool of conflicting sentiments. 

Then she falls to congratulating herself that in all these 
six weeks Raymond Casal has not pronounced one soli- 
tary word that Henry might not have heard, establishing 
in her mind the fact that her relations to the young man 
can be reduced to innocent visits, official meetings at the 
theatre or Madame de Candolle’s ; affirming that never 
once has she o’erstepped the rights of woman, fixing her 
mind upon the point that it was only a kindly action on 
her part to countenance a man the world misjudged ; but 
all these conscientious paradoxes vanish in front of the 
^ stern need for a very simple explanation. 

Why is the interval so painful to poor Juliette that she 
passes all the afternoon preceding Henry’s return prone 
on her couch, (a prey to moral agony-^the return of the 
man to whom she has vowed herself forever? Hardly a 
ray of light enters through the closed Venetians. There 
she lies, with her eyes open, her temples throbbing. What 
does she see through the dilated pupils ? 

A knock at the outer door, distant, but distinctly heard 


124 


Was It Love 7 


in the unnatural calm of the dark room. How she trem- 
bles ! 

It is Gabrielle, who, having heard through Madame 
de Nangay of the Count’s return and Juliette’s headache, 
has hastened to the latter’s side. 

The friend is seated by the couch. She takes in her 
own cool ones the burning hands, and with that instinct 
of curiosity that mingles with pity in the kindest confi- 
dantes, exclaims : 

“ So Poyanne returns to-morrow ! ” 

“Yes,” said Juliette in an almost inaudible voice. 

“ But,” said Gabrielle, drawing nearer, “ will he not be 
a little jealous of our friend ? ” 

“ Ah ! do not speak,” cried Juliette, distractedly grasp- 
ing the hand she held in both her own ; “do not make me 
think of him ! ” 

Allans/” insisted the Countess, “this is what is kill- 
ing you, these childish scruples you make so much too 
much of ! Why, you are free to receive anybody you like, 
I suppose ? And will you let me tell you as a sister why 
this Raymond pleases you so much ? And will you let 
me name another thing you know ?” 

“No, no ; be still ! ” implored Juliette, drawing back 
and regarding her friend, horror-struck. “ I will not 
listen ! ” 

“ But,” said Gabrielle, deciding on putting an end to 
this to her inexplicable mystery at one stroke, “ why 
should you refuse to marry him ? ” 

“To marry him ?” echoed Juliette, in agony. “ It is 
impossible, impossible ! ” 

“ Why ? ” 

“Because I am not free,” sighed the unhappy Juliette, 


The Flowery Slope. 


125 


falling back on the pillow ; and in a voice choked with 
sobs her overburdened heart relieves itself in an avowal 
to which Gabrielle listens, weeping too. The faithful 
“ saint ” does not think, as ninety-nine women out of a 
hundred would, “ I might have known it." 

She only understands the terrible game she has been 
playing when she threw Casal in Juliette’s way. Gabrielle 
is terrified at her handiwork, for she distinctly sees that 
Juliette dares not even now read aloud her heart, the not 
obscure prologue of a profound passion for Raymond, at 
the very moment that she first hears of Juliette’s most 
solemn engagement to De Poyanne. 

“ Ah ! poor girl, poor girl ! ” she cried, covering her 
lips, her hair, her hands with kisses. 

And then, in anguish : 

“ But what is to be done ? ” 

Madame de Tilliere convulsively embraced this life- 
long friend, so kind and gentle with her now in her su- 
preme despair, and hopelessly moaned : 

“As if I kn6w J ” 




VII. 

GHOSTS OF LOVE, 

Sweet as remembered kisses after death.” 

— Tennyson. 


There are certain parts of our character so peculiarly 
our own that the master-passion of love, which transforms 
so many other elements of our humanity, passes over 
them without interference. Juliette de Tilli^re, carried 
off her feet in spite of her better judgment by the trans- 
ports of a new regard during these weeks of increasing 
intimacy with Raymond, continued, in all that had no re- 
lation with this growing sentiment, the same discreet and 
prudent woman as of yore — the same Madame de Tilli^re, 
whose detractors called too prudent and discreet, whose 
friends adored for delicate reserve, 

Juliette so arranged, from day to day, during this month 
and a half, that neither her mother nor her familiars 
should come across Casal too often. But there was one 
of her friends not so easy to deceive — D’Avan^on, who, 
since the first visit of the young man to the Rue Mati- 
gnon, had instinctively distrusted every tactic of Casal. 
His sallies of that first day, his denunciation, a day or 
two after, of Raymond’s gambling propensities, his little 
diplomatic strokes of warning, all had been received by 


Ghosts of Love. 


127 


Juliette with a bearing so unlike her ordinary docility 
as to raise suspicion newly in his mind. Soon his eyes 
had opened to the mortifying conviction that a genuine 
friendship was gradually forming between these two, 
thanks to the protection of the Countess Gabrielle. It 
sufficed for D’Avangon to pay an unexpected visit to the 
Rue Matignon, only to find Casal there before him ; to 
frequent the Opera, only to see Casal conversing with the 
widow, to fan his distrust into a flame of jealousy as 
passionate as it was misplaced. By showing her irri- 
tation with his intermeddling, Madame de Tilli^re but 
increased his enmity, until one day he recommenced 
his diatribes against the young men of the period, when 
Juliette took him up in such a fashion as to make him 
glad to drop the subject. 

But if, ostensibly, it ceased to occupy his mind, it was 
the more a matter for reflection with him when alone. If 
he was assiduous in his attendance at the whist tables 
of the Imperial and the Petit Cercle, it was because he 
would not lose a syllable of tattle about society or the 
coulisses, in order that he might visit the Rue Matignon 
charged with all the news, and ready to justify his easy 
access by a modified scandal-mongery which amused the 
widow as the echo of distant Paris. 

Nothing was more odious to D’Avan^on than to behold 
one of these heroes of polite life established on a firm 
footing in the very Louis XVI. boudoir that had so long 
been camping-ground for him, especially Raymond Casal, 
against whom for years he had cherished the animosity of a 
leader of the by-gone generation against a chieftain of the 
present. To tell the truth, it was extremely galling to be 
thus ousted from his priority, after the years he had been 


128 


Was It Love i 


used to pose as the grand seigneur of the Rue Matignon 
paradise. The attitude we ourselves take up toward the 
world so strangely dominates our vanity ! 

The important net result of these diverse influences 
was that, on the eve of Poyanne’s return, the diplomatist 
had already fought three pitched battles — in the dark — 
against Casal, not only with Madame de Tilliere herself, 
in which he had been ignominiously routed with the loss 
of much pride and more prestige, but with her friends. 
He had begun with Madame de Nanpay, whose society 
he frequented regularly, and had painted for her a por- 
trait of Casal so forbidding that he missed his footing 
through excess of zeal, forgetting Talleyrand’s great 
maxim — in soberer moments D’Avan9on’s idol — that(^x- 
aggeration is but topsy-turvy insignificance^ 

Soyez tranquille!" exclaimed Madame de Nan9ay to 
the grizzled diplomatist ; “ if he is such a terrible man as 
you say, he will not often come to see my Juliette.” 

And when, with indulgent irony, the mother told her 
daughter of the quaint anxieties of their common friend, 
Madame de Tilliere laughed heartily. Thus it was, be- 
tween a jest at such strange jealousy, and Casal’s per- 
fect behavior during one or two encounters, that the 
good old lady slept in peace and comfort with absolute 
confidence in her child — the better that Juliette, not with- 
out a twinge of remorse, had edged in the statement, as 
though by an afterthought : 

“ Monsieur Casal is one of Gabrielle de Candolle’s most 
intimate friends.” 

D’Avan9on, defeated on two sides, as a second con- 
versation with Madame de Nan9ay convinced him, was 


Ghosts of Love. 


129 


obliged to rely on such of the habituh of the Rue Mati- 
gnon as chanced to be in Paris— Mirant and Accragne. 
He knew how highly Madame de TilHere thought of both. 
If these two gentlemen, without apparent combination, 
should come and report to the widow how much already 
public opinion occupied itself with the assiduities toward 
her of such a notorious evil-liver as Casal, without ques- 
tion Juliette would compel the young man to minimize 
the number of his visits. There was a certain indelicacy 
in setting these friends to play his own cross-purposes, for 
both might very easily be still ignorant of Casal’s visits 
to the Rue Matignon. But the unfortunate diplomatist 
was too far gone in egotism and envy to notice such a 
petty circumstance. Received yet more coolly by Juliette 
since his treacherous attempt upon her mother’s sym- 
pathy, D’Avan9on suffered tortures with the complica- 
tion ; and if he did not go so far as to suspect Madame 
de Tilliere of being in love with Raymond, he was not 
mistaken in anticipating danger in an intimacy which, even 
at first sight, had seemed to him so shocking. It was 
thus, in all good faith to serve his dear friend’s best and 
highest interests, that he presented himself one fine after- 
noon at Mirant’s studio, in order to warn him of what was 
going on. 

The artist lived in the Rue Vi^te, next door to the 
regretted Nittis, and his atilier had long been a half-way 
house for amateurs and authors of the day. Mirant had 
obtained world-wide celebrity for his enchanting flower- 
pieces. He was a tall and burly man, with the shoulders 
of Antinous, and the touch, on canvas, of a butterfly. 
As D’Avan9on entered, he was engaged in putting the 
final niceties of tint upon a mimic nosegay of pinks— snow- 
9 


130 


IVas It Love ? 


white, rose-colored, saffron, crimson — gorgeously dressed 
in the velvet jacket painters most affect, and slowly 
blinking his prominent, soft brown eyes in order to obtain 
a more discriminating view of his success. 

He made the diplomatist a courtly bow, continuing to 
paint and talking at the same time ; which makes one think 
there must be something mechanical in the painter’s art 
to enable him to do two things at once. Perhaps that is 
the reason artists are such a happy race of men, if their 
work thus allows them surplus energy ; whereas the un- 
fortunate author, more and more dull of movement in 
proportion to the concentration of his thoughts, becomes 
a sadder and a sadder mortal with the accumulation of his 
works. 

D’Avanpon was too much a man of the world, in the 
worst sense of the term, not to despise this sort of man a 
little ; and it was but seldom that he paid him a visit. He 
reckoned that the rarity of his appearance in the Rue 
Vi^te would lend a certain importance to his recital of 
the new friendship between Madame de Tilliere and 
Casal. Thus to judge was to fail to allow for the ex- 
treme sensibility hidden in the brains of most successful 
artists so long as their vanity is not at play. All the while 
dotting on the finishing pigments of his favorite flowers, 
Mirant was asking himself what new interest could have 
transported the diplomatist to his studio. He understood 
something of what was on the carpet as soon as he caught 
the tone of voice in which D’Avan9on asked : 

“Are you the man to do Madame de Tilliere a real and 
lasting service ? ” 

And then the visitor commenced his recitation, com- 
posed for the occasion. In proportion to the length of 


Ghosts of Love. 


131 


his discourse he could see the painter’s clear eyes darken 
with disquietude. The very idea of Ijkh taking the liberty 
of lecturing Madame de Tilliere made his hand unsteady, 
and he laid down palette and brushes to look D’Avan 9 on 
in the face, and say : 

“ Why do you not tell her all this yourself ? ” 

“ Because I and Casal are not the best of friends, and 
coming from me, the advice would thus be shorn of its 
voucher — authenticity.” 

“ But, on the other hand, unluckily, Casal and myself 
are the very best of friends, and I must tell you that I 
think you are mistaken in him. ” 

Enchanted with this loop-hole of escape, the painter 
took up his tools and set to work, launching, in the mean- 
while, a eulogy of Raymond Casal at his interlocutor, to 
which D’Avangon, in his turn, was forced to lend his ear. 
“ He has — you do not know it 1 — ample intellect. Suppose 
he does amuse himself a little : wherein lies the harm ? 
Tenez, I judge men of the world by a little detail ; I, 
that am only a plain, straightforward painter. When I 
hear one of these drawing-room connoisseurs talking pict- 
ures, I know how to have him. I say to myself : ‘ My boy, 
you are cutting and slashing away at a great rate, but you 
don’t know what you are talking about. Monsieur Mon- 
key.’ You, D’Avanfon, you are a man of judgment ; you 
have not come here to teach me my business. You have 
seen me painting away for half an hour and have not haz- 
arded a particle of advice. That is real tact, my friend. 
Casal is full, chockful of tact, and taste, as well.” 

“ The conceit of these artists !” grumbled D’Avanpon, as, 
a quarter of an hour later, he descended the Rue Villiers. 


132 


Was It Lovel 


“ This man is really a very clever fellow, and he loves 
Juliette with all the soul he has. But Casal has served 
his turn with a neat compliment or two, and blinded him. 
Now for Accragne ; he is a tough old bird, not so easily 
snared with sweet words.” 

Ascending the innumerable stairs that led to Accragne’s 
apartments, the diplomatist ruminated how best to broach 
the subject without receiving one of those gruff replies 
that Ludovic Accragne was in the habit of treating him 
to, on account of his superannuated fopperies. 

“ Bah ! ” he said to himself, “ I will employ the process 
that succeeded so well in Florence in ’66, with Register.” 

This celebrated exploit of the old diplomatist, on which 
he would continue to pride himself till his death, con- 
sisted simply in flattering the mania of Baron Otto von 
Register, an accomplished numismatist but a very mid- 
dling minister. D’Avan 9 on had got into his best graces by 
praising his collection of coins, and then presenting the 
Baron with a Queen Anne farthing which he happened 
to have inherited from his grandfather. This friendship 
between the Prussian envoy and the French emissary 
had resulted in one of those bootless triumphs that make 
the paper glory of embassadors, the premature cognition 
of an important piece of news ; a bit of knowledge, never- 
theless, that had not the slightest effect on matters of 
state in progress. 

Ever since then D’Avan^on had deemed himself Ro- 
than and Saint-Vallier rolled into one ; and we have seen 
how readily this silly sufficiency in his powers of intrigue 
got him into awkward places. His intellect and good 
nature both were tarnished by this antiquated success. 
Who knows what spite an isolated success may wreak'^ 


Ghosts of Love. 


133 


^ upon our destiny ? If D’Avan^on had not deemed him- 
self a diplomatist of the first water, he v/ould never have 
conceived the eccentric project of linking Juliette’s inti- 
mates against Casal, and he would never have been over- 
whelmed with the humiliation of a quadruple checkmate 
at the hands of Juliette herself, of Madame de Nan9ay, 
Mirant, and Ludovic Accragne. 

He sailed boldly, however, into the presence of the great 
man of benevolence, whom he expected to so easily gain 
over, and began by questioning him at length on his chari- 
table undertakings. The ex-prefect beamed with delight. 
He deployed to please his interlocutor whole budgets of 
to^vn and country projects, turning over, in the demon- 
stration, endless piles of blue-books, and statistics culled 
from huge volumes of letters labelled with their dates and 
ranged around the bureaucratic-looking room. Accragne 
was but a plain old man, but his fine smile lit up a brow 
that had no further thought on earth except to serve hu- 
manity. 

“ And now,” said D’Avan^on, without having hit on a 
way of inserting a preliminary wedge, “ let me have a 
word with you about a genuine service we may do Ma- 
dame Juliette de Tilli^re. ” 

“ What service ? ” asked Accragne eagerly, the smile 
broadening on his lips at mention of the name of Ray- 
mond Casal, “ I know what you want to tell me ! ” he 
cried, interrupting the unhappy diplomat. “ Our ever 
dear madame has interested herself in our grand work. 
Already she has subscribed for ten new beds in our pro- 
posed infirmary. . . . What would you have ? A woman 
is abundantly excusable for flirting, just enough to raise 
money for the poor. ... You, ‘ clerical ’ as you are. 


134 


IVas It Lovel 


cannot be angry at such a thing. Did not the Church ” 
— Accragne was a Voltairean — “ did not the Church in- 
vent its Purgatory in order to assist the dissemination 
of the True Faith ? ” 

“ Accragne only needs to be tickled with a subscription 
and a quotation from the Philosophical Dictionary to go 
through fire and water for a man,” thought D’Avanpon, 
bitterly, on his way out. “ It is a good thing De Jardes 
is out of town, or I should have to mop up some twaddle 
or other about Raymond Casal having talked to him the 
other night at the theatre Vith the utmost intelligence 
about the great question of rifled cannon versus armor- 
plate, the construction of a new fortress at Brest, or the 
right conduct of military balloons. This Casal is the 
very devil. . . . 

“ But patience ! Poyanne will be back to-morrow ; and 
if I love not the man’s doctrines, at least he is a gentle- 
man of sense.” 

Juliette’s drama of the heart, which had been rehears- 
ing for so many weeks, was now to receive a new compli- 
cation at the hands of a man who, with inexcusable 
awkwardness, deemed himself the best protector of her 
happiness. But how was D’Avanpon to know that his 
cunning approach to Poyanne would constitute a cruel 
danger to Juliette, and ring up the curtain, for the ora- 
tor himself, on the acutest suffering of an unhappy 
life ? 

f Such is the price we pay for the forbidden apples of 
joy. Our faults are punished by their own fruition. In 
what we call the natural sequence of events there is a 
\ spirit of justice ever at work, which, while giving freedom 


Ghosts of Love. 


135 


to our predilections, chastises us by means of stupid 
wishes realized. 

To Madame de Nan9ay the diplomatist said : “ One day 
people will begin to talk about these visits of Casal’s ; ” 
to Mirant : “ I fear that people will begin to talk about 
the impropriety ; ” to Ludovic Accragne : “ I think peo- 
ple are beginning to talk ; ” to Poyanne he had better 
say : “ I know that all the world is talking of these 
things.” 

And so virulent was this man’s hatred of Raymond 
Casal that he determined not to give Juliette an oppor- 
tunity of being beforehand with him. Poyanne was to 
arrive in Paris at five o’clock in the morning. At ten 
A.M. D’Avan^on was with him, so carefully had he 
studied the Count’s movements, and was concluding his 
philippic thus : 

“ It is only you, my friend, who can prevent this poor 
lady from doing her reputation such an injury. ... I 
should have liked to speak to her myself. . . . But as 
you very well know, madame is always glad to tease me 
for my antipathy to young men — as if I had this feeling 
for such men as_y<?«, my dear Poyanne ! 

“ It is true that I am horrified by the viveurs of the day. 
Not that I blame young men for amusing themselves. 
As for my friends and I, as we said when poor Napoleon 
fell, ^ Nous nous sotnmes diablement amus/s pour diz huit 
anndesT But then, you know, in those days amusement 
was one of the Fine Arts. We never used to sit at 
table till we were gorged, or roll underneath it over-full 
of brandy and soda. Such manners may be good enough 
for Englishmen. Everything from London to-day — from 
neckties to new vices.” 


136 


JVas It Love 7 


The Old Beau might have gone on indefinitely pitch- 
ing into the Anglomania of the Young Man of the Period. 
Henry de Poyanne’s attention was far away. Hardly, on 
the other insisting, “You will speak to Madame de Til- 
li^re ? ” could he elicit : “ I will try and find an opportu- 
nity.” The Count had just received in the heart one of 
those accidental stabs that the hands of busybodies so 
^ often deal ; and all we can do is to bleed inwardly in soli- 
tude. When D’Avan9on had taken his leave, proud of his 
diplomacy as a whole congress, little did he imagine that 
he was leaving behind him a fellow-creature in despair. 
The calumniator would not have been in such a hurry to 
recross the Seine, then the Champs Elys^es, to reach his 
home, if he had realized his handiwork. On his way he 
noticed Casal caracoling along on the slow but handsome 
Boscard. The young man was laughing and talking with 
Lord Bohun. 

“ Amuse yourself, my young friend, amuse yourself, 
while you may ! ” thought the conspirator, following him 
with his sunken eyes ; “ that will not prevent us from cut- 
ting out some very pretty work for you. . . . Poyanne 
will open fire. Juliette will never guess I have seen him 
already. I know her. She is prudent. She was surely 
born to be the wife of a diplomatist. Her very first idea, 
as soon as she realizes that people are beginning to talk 
about her, will be to so arrange that Casal shall call less 
frequently. The animal begins to grunt, insists, commits 
some gross mal-strategy, and so we are well quit of him. 
... If this method fails, we will choose another. I 
had three strings to my bow with Monsieur le Baron Ro- 
gister, but, ha ! ha ! ha ! the Queen Anne farthing did the 
business, Dieu merci ! What pleases me is that I was 


Ghosts of Love. 


137 


not deceived in Poyanne. I felt, I knew, he was the man 
to see things in a proper and becoming light.” 

Whilst the unconscious executioner was indulging in 
this little soliloquy, his unhappy victim, Poyanne, was 
walking his chamber, a prey to the most hopeless, helpless 
grief. The room was large, and the bright sunshine lit 
up the gold letterings on hundreds of books ranged round 
two sides of it. As the orator paced its length, how many 
times, he thought, in the last few months had it come 
upon him in this very room that perhaps Juliette no longer 
cared for him as she was wont. But what child’s play 
were these chimerical doubts compared with the atrocious 
certainty that confronted him this day ! 

A certainty how arrived at ? For the revelation of the 
ex-diplomatist amounted to no more than this : on cer- 
tain occasions Madame de Tilliere received a new friend 
whilst he was away without making any mention of it in 
her letters. 

Nothing more nor less than that. 

All through their correspondence he had felt that here, 
too, a bitter change was in process ; that this sweet spirit, 
on whom he had placed his every hope of earthly hap- 
piness, was failing him. Her letters, it is true, arrived 
punctually. Always the same supple and lady-like hand- 
writing, whose mere sight sufficed to bring the tears to 
his eyes. It was every day the same diary, of a woman’s 
life at once isolated and sociable, critical and affection- 
ate. What, then, was wanting ? Why, instead of finding 
in these letters the elasticity of former days, did the 
Count recognize in every line, reproaching only himself, 
traces of effort, as if the labor was a thing of duty ? Nor 


138 


IVas It Lovel 


did he dare to complain of this in his replies ; and, as we 
have seen, he wrote Juliette good-humored pages, the 
letters of a man of action who smiles at his task, only to 
remain, as soon as the envelope was sealed, seated with 
his hand to his forehead for half an hour at a time, look- 
ing into his heart, where he found the same inexplicable 
timidity that had prevented him from claiming on the eve 
of his departure the kiss of peace he went away with- 
out. 

Similarly, in this hour of separation he strangled down 
the words that came demanding utterance ; the echo 
of his plaints fell muffled back into his overburdened 
soul. 

This unusually noble spirit, a stranger to the egotism 
that passes often in the garb of love, searched himself 
for some cause that might explain his altered relation- 
ship with Juliette. He accused himself of not loving her 
for her own sake ; reproached himself with having been 
despotic and displeasing. He began to formulate pro- 
jects of behavior toward her, so tender and all inclusive, 
that his sweet lady might become once more the friend 
of other days. His sadness vainly sought the mouth- 
piece of adoration ; while, at that very moment, on 
receipt of his letter of the night before, the idolized 
Juliette was murmuring: “How he is changed!” and 
trying to justify the culpable silence that she still kept 
up from week to week. 

Hardly had the cruel diplomatist turned the comer 
of the Rue Domenique when this very explanation he 
had been longing for appeared not only possible but 
compulsory. It now became a want more pressing than 
hunger, comparable only to the necessity of the living 


Ghosts of Love. 


139 


for air. The revelation he had been vouchsafed defined 
the very doubts he had so long entertained of Juliette’s 
love so clearly that he now awoke to action. 

At first the unexpected recital had filled him with un- 
reasoned images of horror. Instead of perceiving these 
two simple facts, the presence of Casal, the silence of 
Madame de Tilliere, a vision, clear as photographic fact, 
showed him the pretty salon in the Rue Matignon, as- 
sociated with the memory of a thousand happy, peaceful 
hours passed in Juliette’s society: basking in this deli- 
cate and once delightful aura, he beheld that detestable 
guest, Raymond Casal, whom he had learned to judge so 
hardly on account of poor Pauline de Corcieux ! 

The collocation of the place and the man was like a 
twist of some infernal instrument of torture in a lonely 
dungeon, where his screams would only bring great clouts 
of mildew spattering down on his distorted features. 

Then he beheld Juliette, seated at her desk, when all 
was quiet, communicating every detail of the day, except 
the name of Raymond Casal, to her deluded diary. 

Suddenly the little scene before his departure to Besan- 
9on flashed across Poyanne’s mind ; and once more the 
phrases of the evening repeated themselves in his ears, 
once more the image of Juliette as she turned her back on 
his caress ! 

Just heavens ! was it possible that even then her purs- 
ing lips concealed the word — Casal ! 

In the mid-battle of these imagined terrors, so poignant 
was the agony they implied, that with tears and sobs 
Count Henry de Poyanne, soldier, orator, politician, wit, 
threw himself on a divan, and wept his heart out like a 
whipped child. 


140 


Was It Love 7 


“ How could she have the heart ? ” he muttered, when 
a little calmer. 

Then a fresh memory came in to freeze his soul — a 
memory the very refinement of horror. . . . “ How could 
she have the heart ? ” Why, were not these the ipsissima 
verba, the identical and absolute words, he had spoken 
eleven years before with regard to his own wife, when he 
was first told of her treason ? 

The analogy of this crisis and that came so forcibly to 
the Count’s mind that the excess of suffering provoked a 
reaction. 

In the moral world there are certain blows we may 
receive, so sudden and so full of threat that they act as 
an alarm to self-preservation. A little danger sometimes 
paralyzes the will ; a mortal one will rouse a very cow- 
ard to protect his threatened life. 

Neither will love die the death without a struggle. 

Far too profoundly planted in Count Henry’s heart was 
his adoration for Juliette de Tilli^re to be uprooted by 
a summer storm. His senses reeled at the suggestion 
of similarity between his infamous wife and this sweet 
woman, the object for so long, so long, of his whole soul’s 
devotion. Poyanne raised himself, he passed his hands 
over his face, as though to shut out the sighted Gorgon, 
and cried in a savage voice : 

“ No, no ; it is not true — not that, not that ! ” There 
are some thoughts so dreadful that the man of senti- * 
) ment refuses to believe them till they, perhaps, are trebly 
proven. This last image was altogether too repulsive ; to 
conjure it was to compel its disappearance. The Count’s 
belief in Juliette’s honor was unassailable — like her own 
mother’s. Spite of his grief, his woe, he found his assur- 


Ghosts of Love, 


141 


ance intact within his heart. There is a certain autoraati- 
city in our faculties, so that when an impetus is given to 
one part of them, the rest are set rotating in the same di- 
rection with proportionate velocity. This impetus, in the 
Count’s case, was the suggestion, self-elicited, of an anal- 
ogy between his wife and Juliette, and his mind was now 
at last in train to act. 

*^Fojons,” said he, “let us argue this matter.” And he 
began walking up and down again, constraining his reason- 
ing powers to a lucid analysis of every circumstance con- 
nected with Juliette, in so far as he knew them, as though 
it had been merely a political discussion. “ Let us argue 
this matter, and let me circumscribe the issue. Thus, for 
instance, Juliette has seen this man — has seen him often, 
very often. D’Avan^on has given me to understand, 
daily. Does he not exaggerate ? What is his evidence 
worth ? He has a masterly intellect, but is the servant of 
his temper. So. This very temper constitutes my argu- 
ment. . . . Since he came here this morning he must 
have dogged my arrival. He must have been tormented 
more than even he is wont to be. . . . Let us admit that 
fact, and look beyond it. Juliette has seen Casal since 
my departure, often — Casal, whom she could only have 
known a very little while, weeks at most — Juliette, who 
opens her door not readily to any one, and that wdien 
she knew my opinion of the man. There can only be two 
reasons for such conduct. Either he pleases her — and 
why might he not ? He pleased Pauline too greatly — or 
else she felt dull, and received him for amusement. After 
this one, another, then somebody else. It is the begin- 
ning of the transformation of her life. Let us look clearly 
into these two reasons.” 


142 


JVas It Love? 


With such sentences, and many more of like form, Poy- 
anne, now master of his feelings, had the courage to call 
the muster of the situation. His heart, however, bled ; for 
whether Juliette had been playing a little comedy of the 
affections with Casal, or whether she had received him 
to merely help to pass away a heavy hour, it was almost 
equally a sign of profound dissatisfaction with himself. 
And Juliette must have known so well that she had delib- 
erately concealed these visits. Fresh light dawned every 
moment, if light that could be called which but illumi- 
nated the horrors of the landscape. 

“ She has had pity on me — pity ! ” he thought, and this 
idea was vinegar upon his wounds. To ask the bread of 
love and get the stone of pity is not pleasant. Hate, per- 
fidy, even abandonment — all these do not quite cast out 
hope ; but pity ! A woman who has aimed to kill you may 
perhaps fall into your arms after gashing you with a dag- 
ger, but the woman who is disenchanted with you and tired 
of your society ; who tries, in fancied mercy, to cure you 
of your love for her by slow degrees, as she has probably 
been cured of hers for you ; whose surviving kindness to 
you is summed up in that one little word, pity — in such a 
woman you need never expect to revive the sentiment of 
love, lest pity change into its congener, contempt. 

“Anything rather than Juliette’s pity,” cried the Count, 
“ even the breaking off of our engagement.” 

From that moment he hesitated not. By two o’clock 
he was in the Rue Matignon, his desire now to face the 
truth strong as his wish to face the Prussian was in ’70. 
What would he learn ? A shiver of horror seized his 
thought lest those beloved lips should lisp : “ 1 love you 
now no longer. ” 


Ghosts of Love. 


M3 


Yet in some states of doubt, certainty, atrocious as it 
I may turn out, seems preferable to that midnight of the 
j heart in which one ignores all facts unfavorable to the 
idol it contains. Into this comer of the wilderness, like 
the hunted stag at bay, had D’Avan 9 on conducted the 
hue and cry and chased the Count. 

At the instant the door opened before Henry, Juliette 
was seated in one of the great easy-chairs, covered with last- 
century silk, that perhaps — who knows ? — had witnessed 
the quarrel between the ancestress a hundred years ago, 
and cruel Alexander de Tilly. Although the sun of May 
shone gayly into the room, and the view was cheerful as of 
yore, with azure sky and all spring greenery, the fire had 
been lighted on the hearth. Juliette was robed in white. 
With her marble pallor, her eyes that spoke of sad insom- 
nia, her drawn lips, one might assume that she was shiver- 
ing with a chill no summer sun might ever warm. 

De Poyanne took her limp hand to press a kiss upon it. 
It trembled in his own. Thus to discover the woman whom 
he came to interrogate, like a morning-glory in the beating 
rain, was to make ’this noble heart forget its suffering at 
sight of Juliette’s. A detail of the physiognomy he knew 
so well completely overthrew his firmness. In Juliette’s 
sapphire eyes the iris had expanded till it was almost lost 
to view. What secret storm of pain had so enshrouded 
his lovely sweetheart’s soul ? Involuntarily De Poyanne 
asked himself this question. Impossible, too, not to con- 
nect her visible woe in some way with D’Avan^on’s denun- 
ciation of the morning. Though fugitive as (flash of 
9 lycopodium,) these thoughts altered the Count’s expres- 
■ sion, and Juliette, who had since his entrance divined 
that he was eaten up with anxiety, now understood that 


144 


JVas It Lovet 


he had come for an explanation. But what about ? Only 
in Paris since the morning, it was impossible he could 
have heard of Casal’s movements. Besides, she had ar- 
ranged with herself, during the sleepless night, to tell 
Henry of her own accord all about these visits. But for 
that it would be necessary to find him in an open and 
facile humor, and he came thus so evidently on the rack. 
It was, no doubt, her letters to Besan^on. During the 
last ten days she had hardly found the energy to trace for 
him as many lines as formerly she used to cover pages. 
. . . While these distracting ideas were passing through 
their minds, Henry and Juliette had already begun to 
exchange those trite and trivial words that resemble the 
salutations of fencers before they engage their weapons in 
earnest. 

After the ordinary questions of each other, De Poyanne 
said : 

“ I am delighted to hear so good an account of Ma- 
dame de Nanpay’s health, and with this fine weather.”. . . 

“ Yes,” said Juliette, “for once we have had a real old- 
fashioned April.” 

“ And Madame de Candolle ? ” 

“ I thank you. Things go much better there. She 
has been so much interested in your campaign.” 

“ Where I entirely failed.” 

“You will make up for it by new successes in the 
Chamber.” 

Heavens ! but the old mother and the young Countess, 
the weather and Parliament, were far enough from their 
mutual preoccupation. Yet still they both postponed an 
explanation now inevitable, recoiling and recoiling from 
it as it drew the nearer. At last the suspense became so 


Ghosts of Love. 


145 


intolerable that Juliette, with her heart on fire, decided 
to speak out. She took De Poyanne’s hand. With a 
forced smile, and a glance that was almost appealing, she 
said : 

“ You look sad, Henry. I see that you are sad. You 
are angry with me because I have written to you these 
last days so hastily. But if you knew how much I have 
suffered, and suffer still, you would forgive me. . . . 
You would not multiply my pain at sight of yours. 
Must I once more repeat that I have never been able, 
that I cannot now, bear to see you unhappy?” 

In her gestures, in her phrases, in the look that ac- 
companied both, Juliette was sincere. She was pro- 
foundly moved. In the half hour this cruel interview 
had already lasted, notwithstanding no syllable of re- 
proach had been pronounced by De Poyanne, she felt 
that he was suffering, and this feeling, which had ever 
been the first principle of her love for him, still lingered 
in her heart with a vitality she little dreamt. Alt the 
chords of romantic charity, in other days touched by 
the sad confidences of the ^Count, began to vibrate in 
her bosom. It was an awakening of her sentiments, 
unexpected, unrehearsed, irresistible. If Henry de Poy- 
anne at that moment had been able to arrange with 
precision the different effects of this interview, he could 
have employed no better method to show how much he 
suffered. But Henry thought, on the contrary, so many 
months of grief had passed over him that he had learned 
to don the mask of indifference. Now, no longer lost 
in inner argument, he once more became for Juliette 
the superior and unhappy being she had so passionately 
pitied as to grow to love. Till half an hour ago her 
10 


146 


JVas It Lovet 


dreams of happiness had played round another’s image, 
but ever the magnetism of pity glowed for De Poyanne. 
She submitted to its power with a passive will. At 
that moment she was actually unable, as she had said 
so touchingly and tenderly, to see him suffer. As to 
Henry, as in his former meditations, it was just this 
sentiment that he shrank from as from the touch of 
red-hot iron. He slowly drew his hand away, and 
said ; 

“Ah! Juliette, you wrong me. I have never meas- 
ured your letters by the page. I have loved so to re- 
ceive them that I thought they were for you a work of 
love and not of duty.” 

“ Ingrate ! ” Juliette interrupted, in a tone of tender 
coquetry, “ to think that I could do without writing to 
you ! ” 

“Yes,” cried Poyanne, with a visible effort, “it is 
better for me to be frank. It is true, your letters have 
hurt me. Not because they were short and hurried, but 
I felt, as I feel now, that you were not talking to me 
through them with an open heart. You wrote them as 
a journal of your life, but you did not tell me that you 
were forging every day the links of a new friendship, 
as I have learnt in the few hours since my return to 
Paris. That is what has hurt me, very cruelly. Why 
should I conceal it from you ?” 

Their eyes were fixed upon each other as the Count 
thus formulated, with uncompromising clearness, the ac- 
cusation Madame de Tilliere had been about to meet — in 
her own time. She blushed most deeply, and, in her 
turn, frowned. In these few words the Count was posed 
before her, not merely as a sufferer, but as a judge ; and 


Ghosts of Love. 


147 


pride began to mingle with sympathy in her woman’s 
heart, so affectionate yet haughty. She responded almost 
firmly : 

“But neither did I, Henry, ever intend to hide from 
you that. . . . There are some things I wished to tell you 
by word of mouth rather than write. ... I know how 
readily misunderstandings creep into letters. ... In- 
terrogate — and you may judge me ! ’’ . . . ^ 

“ Friend of my soul ! ’’ sighed the Count, with a pure 
melancholy free from every shade of reproach, “ how 
little do you understand me, or my love. ‘ Interrogate ’ 
you! ‘judge’ you ! — ah! what words for you to use to 
me. Juliette, I beg you on my knees, look not upon me as 
a jealous man. I am not jealous. Nor have I the right 
to be. I respect you too much to be suspicious of you. 
Have I ever, since you gave me leave to love you, been 
suspicious of your actions ? If you received such and 
such a person, I may have thought that you might live 
to regret it, but as for distrusting you, never ! Only 
that you should sit down to write to me, and that you 
should weigh each phrase in your letter instead of writing 
freely down your thoughts ; that you should cherish fear 
for me, that is what cuts me to the heart ; and what you 
say about misunderstandings. See, Juliette, it is not 
these things themselves that cause me so much pain, but 
what I know remains behind. I perceive that your feel- 
ings toward me are changed. I see — ah ! let me speak ! ’’ 
insisted he, at a gesture from Juliette. “ I have thought 
thus for a long, long time. I see that our sweet intimacy 
is over, this happy heart-to-heart existence that was the 
dearest habit of my life. That I love you, as ever — but 
that you love me not. This little sign of your new friend- 


148 


IVas It Love 2 


ship, of your silence — ’tis but one in twenty. If I speak 
thus to you, understand that I attach no more importance 
to these than to the rest. The only thing I think impor- 
tant is your love. . . . Juliette, if I seem no longer to 
you what I have seemed, oh, tell me so ! I must ask of 
you : Do you still love me ? You say you cannot bear to 
see me suffer. ... It is this terrible doubt that makes 
me suffer. Oh ! put an end to it. . . . Even to lose you 
would be less cruel than not to know either what you 
wish or what you feel. ” 

Juliette listened to Count Henry ; his tone of voice, 
more and more broken, more and more tender, more and 
more timid, as he went on, revealed more clearly than 
his words his inner nature and his depth of passion. 
Strained toward her with an expression of profoundest 
suffering, she saw this face, perhaps so plain in common 
life, transfigured by the charm of a great grief. She 
understood, what she had doubted now for months, that 
Poyanne spoke the simple truth when he described his 
love for her as deathless, and she had the insupportable 
impression, stamped as it were upon her brain, that if she 
told this man she no longer loved him, it would be like a 
blow that should fell him senseless to the earth. How 
could she nurture for an instant pride, in face of this 
suppliant tenderness, this pulsing note of deep despair ? 
Henry had put the weapon in her hand, and bade her 
strike. How could she ? 

Not one phrase could Juliette articulate that should 
render her free to stab the man who had so loved her — 
loved her now. She had promised to become his wife 
»o that he might be happy ; and now he stood before her 
V, 'retched, at her hand. The unconscious desire for a 



ii u. * 






DO YOU NOT KNOW I LOVE YOU? 






Ghosts of Love. 


149 


new existence which had led to her dangerous relations 
with Casa], her hidden revolt against her engagement to 
Poyanne, her wish to maintain her independence till the 
time came for an explanation, the storm and sorrow of the 
last few days — what were all these weighed in the balance 
against this supreme agony, an agony that pierced Juliette 
to the soul ? 

Unreasonable tears came to her eyes ; slie rose, she 
threw herself upon her knees in front of him ; without one 
after-thought she put her arms round him as one em- 
braces a suffering child, and Henry, passing at one bound 
from extremest sorrow to a joy unhoped for, trembled like 
an aspen leaf and murmured : 

“ You weep, my child ! You love me still ? No, no ; it 
is not possible. You love me — love; me still ?” 

“Do you not knoiv I love you?” answered Juliette, 
through her tears. “ Look you, Henry ; I will not ever, 
ever, ever let you have another instant in your life like 
that. . . . Why did you not speak sooner ? . . . Why 
did you write — you, too — such cold, cold letters ? . . . 
But it is over . . . No longer sad ? Until this moment I 
knew not how much you are to me. I am your own for 
life. I swear that I will never see that man again. Be 
still! I swear it. You must not speak of him again. 
You will believe me when I say I did not see him for 
myself but for a friend he loves. . . . But let him stand 
betwixt us nevermore ; you hear me — never. You shall be 
happy. I will have you happy. Trust me; believe in 
me and in my love. Let our two lives begin from this 
instant. Smile, smile ; look at me with those eyes that 
are my joy. You are my dear, dear friend, my Henry, 
and I love you ! ” 


IVas It Love ? 


150 


She looked in the Count’s face, which had lost its look 
of suffering, and glowed with a mysterious ecstasy, for in 
her heart was all the tenderness that bubbled from her 
lips. Was it a lie, “ she loved him ” ? She thought she 
did, just then. But then she knew that the reason she 
had given for receiving her new friend was false. What 
mattered all so long as nevermore this torture of her 
lover’s grief should clutch her heart-strings, make her 
spirit faint ? And Henry, showing how profoundly he be- 
lieved her, cried : 

“ Swear to me, Juliette, that it is for love you speak ! ” 

“ I swear it ! ” answ’ered she. 

“ Without your love, I know not what would come of 
me,” said Poyanne. “ You say I should have spoken 
sooner. It is so hard to be misprized when one loves so 
deeply. If you had told me that you loved me not, I 
would not have reproached you, dear. I think I should 
have died of it as men die who have no longer air to 
breathe. . . . But you speak truly— it is over. Ah ! but 
I think that to experience the joy that fills me now I 
would be v/illing to suffer even more. I am so happy, oh ! 
so happy, now ! ” 

“ Is it true that you are happy, happy ? ” said Juliette, 
with an almost frightened air. 

“ Ah ! true,” repeated he, drawing that loved head to 
his breast, not seeing that her eyes, lately so bright with 
exaltation, are clouded suddenly with a vision that she 
would, oh ! so willingly, exclude, for she kissed her lover 
now with a tender passion that would have chased his last 
doubt away if he had nursed one. 

In spite of Henry de Poyanne’s years and the decep- 
tions he had suffered, he was loo young in heart, too 


Ghosts of Love. 


151 


entirely loyal and straightforward, to suspect that this 
fervid embrace was due to a renewal of remorse. 

Juliette had just recognized, as one might recognize a 
midnight robber by a flash of lightning, even whilst she 
was throwing herself in an ecstasy of gracious pity into 
Henry de Poyanne’s arms, that if her life were to be 
the forfeit, instead of merely her life-long happiness, she 
would never be able to forget Raymond Casal. 




VIII. 

BETWEEN TWO LOVES. 

“ How happy could I be with either ! ” 

— Beggar^s Opera, 

After the departure of Henry de Poyanne, Madame 
de Tilli^re experienced for a time a strange feeling of 
quietude and calm — the sort of over-tired peace that 
follows difficult decisions. She made her toilette for the 
afternoon, intending to pay a visit to the dressmaker ; 
but after having directed the coachman to the Rue Fau- 
bourg St. Honore, the task of trying-on seemed so dis- 
tasteful to her, in her present frame of mind, that she 
changed the itinerary in favor of the Bois de Boulogne. 

The weather was entirely delightful, and to Juliette’s 
lately troubled mind it seemed that an hour or two’s 
solitude in the green alleys of that great heart of Paris 
would be refreshing. There was a part of it well known 
to her and to the driver, frequented by very few, espe- 
cially at that hour of the day, between the second lake 
and the River Seine, more green, more beautiful than the 
rest. Thither she directed her carriage, and, strolling 
amidst the long alleys of lovely trees, might have imagined 
herself miles in the country. Isolated at once from the 
world, and protected by the near presence of her equi- 
page, Juliette gave herself without reserve to the revery 


Between Two Loves. 


153 


of the moment. With almost childish wonder she admired 
the progress all the tender greenery had made since her 
last visit, and watched the flickering shadows of the giant 
oaks upon the new-mown sward. The flowers of spring 
spread themselves at her feet — snowy Easter daisies with 
their pink inner sepals, speedwell with its eyes of heav- 
enly blue. Above stretched the settled continental sky 
of steel-azure, and the nesting birds made the forest vocal 
with their lovable clamor, as though she had been in the 
depths of her own dear domain of Nangay. In certain 
intervals she would come to parks of sombre Scotch firs, 
where the wind, that grand old harper, whispered its im- 
memorial cantata to the earth in mysterious sighs far 
overhead, instinct with the imponderable noises of far 
Niagara or the resounding sea. Juliette sat down on a 
rustic bench, and as the thoughts of all her love-troubles 
surged up through her superficial peace, the whistle of a 
locomotive in the valley brought to her mind the forgotten 
nearness of the great city. 

The peace of dreams — such was the unconscious ob- 
ject Juliette ha'd come to the Bois in search of, and she 
half found it in this communion with the ever-simple soul 
of nature. (Beauty, without self-knowledge^or ambition,* 
such seemed to her the language of the flower ; duty, with- 
out self-seeking or desire, the sermon of the plant. What 
thought inhabits vegetable life ? To live in the permitted 
form, to exist in the allotted place, to perform their pre- 
arranged functions — nothing more. One has no need to 
be a philosopher in order to hear, to comprehend, this 
peaceful continuity of counsel from branch and blossom. 
It is enough not to shut one’s heart to the sweet harmony 
of surrounding things ; there is no necessity to think. 


154 


JVas It Love 7 


If Madame de Tilliere, after her interview with Poy- 
anne, had imagined and hoped that this fair forest walk 
would bathe her nerves in tranquillity, what a mistake 
she made ! At the end of these lovely alleys, gemmed with 
emerald turf and draped with the Creator’s tapestry, she 
beheld, instead of the calm visions of other days, the im- 
age of this cruelly inevitable thought : after all she had 
said to Henry, she would be forced to close her door on 
Raymond Casal forever. Yes, she would have to do it, 
in virtue of her promise, even though Henry did not exact 
it from her lips. To listen to a promise is to accept 
it as a valid pledge. She would have to do it, because 
these two men, if she failed in her engagement, would be 
sure, sooner or later, to meet under her roof — and the 
► very thought of the look they would exchange made her 
heart faint. She would have to do it, in a word, because 
she was the promised wife of De Poyanne, and because it 
was her life-intention not to fail him. To see Casal ! — it 
was no longer possible to carry on her self-deception. It 
would be treason, now she knew she loved him ! 

Yes; she loved him. The truth of it, against which 
•her unhappy spirit had struggled for days, was clear to 
her through the pain that clutched her heart-strings at the 
sudden knowledge that they were forever separated. . . . 
She loved him. Then how was it that such a love had 
not been strong enough just now to give her the courage 
to accept her freedom by taking Henry at his word, and 
pronouncing the “My heart is yours no longer,” he de- 
manded t How, unless it was impossible with truth to 
pronounce the word of breaking off, unless the sensation of 
her betrothed’s anguish, already, though he knew it not. 


Between Two Loves. 


155 


betrayed by the defection of her soul, was so powerful as 
to obliterate her love for Casal, and her natural and inno- 
cent longing to be happy ? 

What insensate hurly-burly of her imagination made it 
possible to this unhappy woman to give her heart to these 
men at one and the same time, to divide, as it were, a 
double allowance of love between two ? The whole cur- 
rent of her spirit flowed toward one ; but in order to 
approach him it was necessary to walk over the other ; 
and that she was not strong enough to do. With terrify- 
ing force, she realized at last, entirely, the horror of this 
dictatorship of one whose promised bride she had been 
now so long of her own free will — though never, never, 
of her own free will would she rebel. Again she saw 
those eyes of Henry’s, heard his voice. At the recollec- 
tion, once more her pity tore her heart in twain. 

But was it pity ? 

When we merely pity another we remain unmoved ; at 
any rate, our life remains our own beside this pain that is 
outside ourselves ; whereas Juliette, at the contact of this 
great agony she beheld in every look and tone of De Poy- 
anne, had felt a mortal pain herself within her heart of 
hearts, her soul of souls. 

The fact of the matter remains, ^ere glows sometimes, 
not often, in cold humanity a force of pity so intense as 
to sub lime itseh^into love by its own power.} It is no 
longer possible to separate the sentiments. It was this 
sort of love that Juliette had for De Poyanne. 

At thought of Henry her own personality was lost, her 
proper life suspended, and yet she felt it was beyond a 
doubt she loved Casal. 

Raymond ! She saw him, too, in front of her, with his 


PFas It Lovel 


156 


boyish smile, his limpid eyes, his noble physiognomy ; with 
the charm there was in his every movement — Raymond, 
with whom she could no longer deny she had been fall- 
ing deeper and deeper in love every moment of those de- 
lightful fatal weeks ; Raymond, at the eleventh hour to 
part from whom was to enter, of her own accord, the soli- 
tary dimness of the tomb. 

She loved Casal, but with a strange and morbid love 
that was not powerful enough to dethrone the former idol 
of her heart. ^ 

If she yet questioned this was love, the civil warfare 
of her spirit this warm, calm May afternoon would have 
solved the problem. Amidst these sweet surroundings 
she felt her eyes fill with tears, her soul dissolve in a 
passionate longing to have Raymond there with her, to 
lean upon his arm, look in his face, and that it was per- 
missible. The torrid languor of the atmosphere after the 
damps of early spring, the aroma of invisible flowers on 
the zephyr, the promptings of the cloudless sky at this 
glad season, all revived in Juliette the dream of happiness 
that sometimes renders one so sad amid these heavenly 
surroundings. Now she would evoke Raymond in order 
to try and dream a little longer ; now the thought of Henry 
would come to chase away the cherished vision. A mon- 
strous dualism usurped her being ; between two loves she 
could see nothing but the horizon of despair. 

“ No, no ! ” she cried, “ I am Henry’s for life. I am 
not responsible for my thoughts ; for my actions I am. I 
will be strong — I will.” And she prayed for strength to 
dominate the sudden distress that seized her, finding a 
certain encouragement in the lip-utterance of the forbid- 
den name, as she exclaimed : 


Between Two Loves. 


157 


“ Even if Raymond calls, I will not see him.” 

After two hours of lonely meditation, Juliette reentered 
her carriage, having at least chained her light fancies to a 
firm resolve. But she did not feel that she was physically 
able to face Casal, and tell him that she would not, could 
not, evermore receive him. To give orders that he should 
no longer be admitted would be an unjustifiable proceed- 
ing, which he had not deserved. Juliette hit on the expedi- 
ent of getting Gabrielle de Candolle to request the young 
man not to revisit the Rue Matignon, under the pretext 
that the tittle-tattle of the world had reached Madame de 
Nan9ay’s ears, and created a misunderstanding between 
mother and daughter. She only saw the weak points of 
this defensive strategy when, broaching it to her friend, to 
whose house she was driven after her excursion to the 
Bois de Boulogne. 

Gabrielle exclaimed, stroking Juliette’s bright hair : 

“You know that I will do the slightest thing you bid 
me, love ; but will Raymond believe your reason ? ” 

“ Whether he believes it or not,” pouted Juliette, “he 
will understand that it is not my wish to receive him, and 
he is too much a gentleman to try and force his way.” 

“ He loves you ! ” objected Gabrielle. 

“ Oh ! do not tell me that ! ” cried Madame de Tilliere 
nervously ; “you must not speak such words.” 

“ But, my sweet, it is to prove to you that he will seek 
an explanation.” 

“ Well,” answered Juliette, in a hollow voice, “if he 
does, it will be time to repeat to him what he already 
knows through you.” 

“Are you quite sure you would be strong enough ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” moaned the widow, hiding her face in her 


JVas It Love 7 


158 


hands, “ I see you no longer believe in me, no longer 
respect me, after all that I have told you.” 

“ / not believe in you ? I not respect you, my dar- 
ling ? ” responded the Countess, taking Juliette in her 
arms. “Till yesterday afternoon I did not know how 
much I thought of you, how much I loved you. If you 
only knew how I lay awake and trembled to think of 
your coming interview with Poyanne. Not respect you ? 
Why ? Because of my cruel, fatal imprudence in failing to 
divine that your secret engagement was the cause of your 
unwillingness to accept a new friendship at my hands ? 
For it was I who brought you and Casal together ! But it is 
true, I fear — ” She ceased at sight of Juliette’s distress, 
and changed her strain. “ Oh ! do not listen to me ; I was 
foolish. I will be clever in this matter, for your sake, and 
quit you of his visits. . . . He will not suspect the cause 
for which you sacrifice him. Casal will not be jealous. 
He has no slightest inkling of your affection for the Count. 
Nor will he dare to question your defence. . . . And 
this week or next, my sweet one, we will start hand in 
hand for Nanfay or Candolle. And I wil^care for you 
and love you like a sister. I will spoil you. I will cure 
you of your sorrow. But never say to me again I do not 
love you, or that I love you less. You see I love you more 
than ever.” 

“Ah ! but you do me good when you speak so,” sighed 
Juliette, placing her head on the faithful breast of her 
Saint; “this is the only place that gives me heart’s ease 
in the wide, wide world. Kiss me again and say I’m not 
a monster.” 

This sigh, drawn from the dark deeps of a soul deluged 


Between Two Loves. 


159 


with the most obscure but intolerable moral trouble that 
can afflict man or woman, troubles we are ashamed to 
specify, though mortal, remained forever on Gabrielle’s 
memory. But the Countess had good reason to be prodi- 
gal of tender consolation, for she had shown, by her in- 
flection on a single word, that Juliette was no longer quite 
the same to her. Nothing but the way in which she spoke 
the word “ Poyanne,” the visible effort these two syllables 
cost her. All her enchanting endearments hardly sufficed 
to obliterate the impression, any more than her reiterated 
assurances of the success of her mission did away with 
the effect of her first doubt : 

“ Will he believe your reason ? ” 

Leaving the Rue Tilsitt, reassured, at any rate, as to the 
execution of the plan she had invented, Madame de Til- 
liere went home, even more unhappy than when she started 
out. Already had an awful hope glided into her haunted 
soul, that frightened her as though it had been a crime. 
It is true, she had been sincere with herself in her project 
of never more receiving Raymond Casal, and throughout 
her interview with Gabrielle. Withal, she could not help 
wishing that her friend’s first fear might become an ac- 
complished fact, and that the young man would seek an 
interview direct and definite. By a strange detour of 
spirit that caused her much remorse, Juliette -experi- 
enced an irresistible longing, in this hour of eternal sepa- 
ration, to be told by Raymond’s own lips that he loved 
her. A natural inconsequence, for a heart at war with 
itself. Is it not thus every time we seek to supersede a 
stronger love by a weaker? Over this strange senti- 
ment vanity has little power. Passion shows its mastery 


i6o 


JVas It Love 7 


of egotism, and Juliette could not understand how it was 
that after her visit to the Rue Tilsitt she was really no 
more established in herself than before. Divided, as she 
was, between two incompatible sentiments, it was but nat- 
ural that she should lean toward the one she was about 
to immolate upon the altar of logic. All the more so, 
because the bond that attached her to Poyanne was alto- 
gether a negative affection, and lent her soul no joy. With 
what pain did she admit this to herself, that night and the 
next morning ! She was not strong enough to see this 
man suffer; therefore she must love him ! To spare his 
agony, she was about to give him her life ; yet now that 
she beheld him glad and happy, she seemed to have no 
thought save for the other. Was she on this account, as, 
in the moment of her supreme sorrow, she had implored 
Gabrielle to tell her — was she on this account a monster ? 

Full of this fancy, that there was really something un- 
natural in her love for Casal, Juliette thought : “ Poor 
friend I so noble-minded. At least you shall never have 
reason to doubt me. I owe you that. My life is yours 
entirely. How hard it will be to conceal my thoughts 
— because he loves me — how he loves me ! ” 

And then of Casal : 

“ He loves me, too, or thinks he does. Or thinks he 
does ? In a fortnight he will have forgotten all about 
these weeks of sweetest friendship ! He will fall back 
upon a life of pleasure. When one of his friends shall 
speak my name, he will smile. ... ‘ Oh, yes ! the little 

widow I was courting, when her mother forced me to 
give up the chase. I remember. But it is all over now, 
all over, long ago ! ’ . . . And my golden dreams of be- 
ing to him a benign, a beneficial life-influence, of drawing 


Between Two Loves. 


i6i 


7 him from his uneven, reckless path, of making him his 
worthy self before the world — is all that over, too ? 

“At least I have proved to him there are good women 
in the world who will not allow a man to tell them things 
they should not listen to. But he has always been so 
simple, and so kind ! ” 

/ Alas ! it is not the same side of our souls that reasons 
and that feels ;^and Juliette having, as she thought, 
broken off all relations with Casal, found herself now 
more than ever possessed by his image. 

The day after her visit to Gabrielle de Candolle, as 
twelve o’clock approached, she was thinking : 

“ Raymond is now returning from the Bois. He has 
found her letter, even if he did not get it this morning. 
He is asking himself what can she want to say to him. 
He thinks, perhaps, it is to arrange anew the water party 
that fell through the other week.” 

At thought of this relinquished project, a whole pano- 
rama of blue water, calm skies, and green hills unrolled 
itself on her imagination, and she bemoaned the never- 
to-be hours of sweet conversation on the misty bosom of 
the ever-flowing Seine. 

“ What is my daughter thinking of ? ” said Madame de 
Nan 9 ay, at the breakfast-table. “Has she some hidden 
sorrow on her mind ? ” 

“ My dearest mother, what an idea ! ” cried she, trem- 
bling as though those loving eyes were reading her heart. 
Vainly she forced a smile and started some lively topic, 
in the presence of this clear-sighted mother, who shook 
her head, and silently observed how sadly her dear 
Juliette’s face had changed. What strange sadness had 
touched those fixed eyelids, on which want of sleep had 

II 


i 62 


IVas It Love 2 


set its vampire seal, and paled those cheeks still livid with 
the salt of tears? Juliette cherished, then, some senti- 
mental secret, and it was unfortunate. 

For to suspect her child of any fault, or of remorse, 
the noble, pious Madame de Nan9ay was as incapable 
as she would have been powerless to console could she 
have guessed the truth. And this absolute confidence 
her mother placed in her was a fresh grief to Juliette. 
Now, when so many internal wounds were bleeding, 
Juliette prayed for solitude, even to her own reproach. 
In solitude she might give way to the madding march 
of her emotions. It was a consolation to regain her 
own little boudoir ; and there, anew, her eyes fixed on 
the clock, she betook herself to the calculation of the 
minutes and seconds with which we associate, though so 
far away, the thought and gestures of some loved one. 

“ One thirty. ... He is at the Rue Tilsitt ; Gabrielle 
has received him. The room reminds him of our happy 
hours. Nevermore will they return. . . . She speaks. 
. . . Heavens ! if he should think I am afraid to talk 
to him myself ! . . . No ; he regards it simply as a sign 
of my indifference. But will he believe what Gabrielle 
tells him ? . . . What is it to me whether he believes her 
or not ? He listens. . . . Perhaps, who knows ? the whole 
thing has been a comedy to him, and what Gabrielle says 
to him is all one. . . . But no, he loved me, and if he 
did not tell me so, it was because of his respect. . . . 
What delicacy of heart ! Spite of his life ! What will 
he now become ? . . . Mon Dieu ! but this is hard ! ” 

Then, after one of those vague meditations in which 
our whole soul is absorbed unconsciously in another’s, as 
if awaking from a morbid dream, she cried : 


Between Two Loves. 


163 


“ Half-past two. It is over. If Gabrielle has had no 
other visitors, she will be here to tell me soon. ... A 
ring ! It can be only Gabrielle. ... It can be only 
Gabrielle ! ” 

Madame de Tilliere had taken the precaution to deny 
herself to everybody but the Countess. It may be imag- 
ined, therefore, how utterly astounded she was, as she ran 
a few steps forward to welcome and embrace her expected 
friend, to find herself face to face with Raymond Casal ! 

The shock of his unexpected intrusion, coming at a 
moment when her shattered nerves were at their utmost 
tension, was too much for her, and she almost fell into the 
nearest seat. In spite of her usual self-control, and that 
it was doubly needful now to meet this unwelcome guest 
with a firm front, Juliette felt herself grow scarlet ; and 
then the life-blood flowed to her distended heart, and left 
her pale as marble, with little more of stir and will about 
her than a statue. But she perceived, and with a sort of 
curious joy, that Casal himself was hardly less agitated. 
The hazard of the step he had dared to take deprived 
him of his accustomed presence of mind, and almost of 
his power of speech. To all appearance, at that moment, 
he was far enough from the Don Juan of popular opinion, 
or the modern fop rendered fatuous by facility and much 
success ; he resembled no type of man, in fact, more than 
the every-day suitor bound by the spontaneous shackles of 
heart-felt love for a lady who has checked, if not rejected, 
his addresses. 

If Juliette had ever seriously thought Raymond Casal 
was toying with her affections, his attitude now, far be- 
yond the cunning of the most accomplished comedian to 
simulate, would have undeceived her. The one sign that 


164 


Was It Love ? 


distinguishes true love from false is that every triumph 
Z-of the former is marked by fresh humility, and of the lat- 
ter by a certain haughtiness. Instead of the lurid light 
of victory glinting from his handsome eyes, Raymond's 
look was dubious and overclouded as he stood before the 
only woman he had ever loved. He seemed to fear his 
own audacity, and more to dread the pain he might be 
giving than to look for any measure of success. 

“ I trust that you will forgive me, Madame de Til- 
li^re,” he said with much humility, “if I made use of 
the name of the Countess Gabrielle to gain admission to 
your house. I came direct from her and thought to 
speak to you without delay. It may be that what I have 
to say to you will explain, if not excuse, my seeming rude- 
ness. . . . But if you wish me now to leave you, or to 
postpone this interview at your pleasure, only let me 
know, and I will do exactly as you say.” 

He spoke in low, submissive tones, almost timidly. 
Madame de Tilliere, on her part, had greatly recovered 
herself, and looked upon him with a not unfriendly as- 
pect. Whether Casal’s ingenuous address had touched 
her heart, or whether it was her cue not to seem in dread 
of anything that he might have to say, or whether she was 
yielding to the seduction of his mere propinquity — which, 
'^when we love, is the origin of all our over-kindness — it 
is certain that Juliette did not play partfcuTarly well the 
character she had pretended to assume, of an indifferent 
hostess duty-bound to deny a visitor because his presence 
is unpleasing to the family. 

It would have been so simple to rejoin : “ I think that 
Gabrielle has told you all that I can possibly say,” and 
just to add a semi-civil word of social chill that would 


Between Two Loves. 


165 


forever render a repetition of his audacity impossible ! 
Instead of that, she heard herself repeat, rather than in- 
tentionally spoke, in every-day terms, but now how full 
of future danger, these words : 

“ Mon Dieu, monsieur, I must say that after what 
Madame de Candolle has probably told you, I scarcely 
expected a visit from you. But I have no reason for re- 
fusing to speak to you or answer you, if you come to ask 
me, as I think you must, about the rather delicate com- 
mission with which I charged her.” 

“ Yes, madame,” answered Raymond, seating himself 
at a respectful distance, and in rather firmer tones. “ You 
have rightly guessed what my presence here has reference 
to, and you will now allow me to repeat the answer that 
I made the Countess. Not that you need have, let me 
assure you, the slightest fear that I will not obey, if you 
yourself express the wishes she transmitted. ... I 
understand the scruples you observe, and harsh as they 
may seem in my regard, I do not disapprove of them. I 
say again, and pledge my word of honor, that if, after 
what I am about to say, you persevere in your decision, 
this visit shall be my last. . ! . I should have but one 
thing to reproach you with, if the fault were not clearly 
mine in not having known how to make known the de- 
gree of my respect, in fact, my veneration, for you — that 
you had not made known your wishes to me personally, 
instead of through a third person, even Madame de Can- 
dolle, for then you would have spared this indiscretion, 
since I should at once have said what I have had it on 
my mind to tell you for so many days.” 

“ Well,” said Juliette, with a half smile, “ perhaps it is 
my fault.” 


i66 


Was It Level 


She knew already, as though they had been written on 
Casal’s forehead, the words he meant to say ; the presenti- 
ment made her every fibre thrill ; but by a final effort 
Juliette sought to maintain the conversation at the society 
level, which, for women, constitutes their best defence. 
“ It was, perhaps, my fault, and now I am the sufferer. 
This interview is doubtless more or less painful to you, and, 
why not confess it ? also to me. There are some things 
always hard to express in words, particularly when they 
bear too hardly on one who has not deserved them. . . . 
But you know my mother’s disposition — you have seen 
her — how little she is of our day ; and you rnay guess 
how ominous to her appear the slightest hints of spiteful 
scandal. ... I have no right to contend with her in- 
clinations. You guess that, too ? Do not construe this 
as a personal grievance ; for in six months, a year, I will 
receive you as I do to-day, with much, so much, esteem 
— yes, with all sympathy ! ” 

“ All that is undeniable,” sighed Raymond, bowing, “ and 
once more I accept my sentence. . . . Only this is what 
I want to plead. In speaking thus to me, you talk to the 
Casal of society, who was presented to you two months 
ago — the Casal who was a visitor at your house, as at the 
houses of Madame de Candolle, Madame d’Arcole, and a 
score of others. . . . Would you speak to me with such 
precision if I tell you, madame, that since I have known 
you my life is absolutely changed ? My soul was then 
without an object ; but I have one now. I thought myself 
used up, my heart a cinder, utterly incapable of any but 
ephemeral emotions ; but now I feel a sentiment that is 
eternal. It seemed my fate to grow gray, with many a 
comrade, in the service of the club, the track, the theatre. 


Betweeji Two Loves. 


167 


I know not what resort of disillusion — nothing in front 
of me but the hope of killing the future in a vain pursuit 
of what the world calls pleasure. I see before me now 
the highest, noblest, most absorbing interest of all my 
life ! . . . I tell you now that weeks would have elapsed 
ere I had spoken thus if this disastrous interruption had 
not come. Between the man I was when I sat next to you 
at Madame de Candolle’s and the man I am now, stands 
a love I had previously neither felt nor imagined — a love 
compacted of respect and pure devotion ; and this is what 
I wanted you to realize, in order that I might have the 
right to add when, in six months’’ time, you have given me 
leave to come again, if, after that separation, I lay at your 
feet once more the same heart overflowing with the same 
love, and if I ask you then to take my name and be my 
wife, are you quite certain you will answer : ‘ No ’ i ” 

Since Raymond Casal began to speak his mind, Ma- 
dame de Tilli^re knew very well that he had come to say, 
“ I love you ; ” and, as we have seen, she had schooled 
herself to accept this declaration rather in the light of a 
jeu d'isprit, quit with a show of anger if he expressed 
himself more warmly. She had hoped to remain suf- 
ficiently mistress of herself to disguise from him her own 
distress. But she could not guess that he would call in 
to the aid of his passion words so caressingly delicate as 
to pierce her very heart ; still less that it was his inten- 
tion to speak so soon of marriage, strangely unlike the 
man and his antecedents as such a proposition seemed. 

This offer, announced in such language by such a man, 
constituted a proof, far stronger than any oaths and pro- 
testations, in favor of the nobility of sentiment with which 
Juliette had inspired him. A crude avowal, that would 


i68 


JVas It Love t 


have betrayed mere passion on Casal’s part, she w^ould, 
unquestionably, have been strong enough to resent imme- 
diately, and so have saved herself from further com- 
plications. In moments of mere explanation, had she 
not been able successfully to assume the vi^eapons of the 
woman of the world ? But now how different ! In pro- 
portion as the man who loved her unveiled the tender- 
ness of his emotion, the trait she had the least expected 
him to show, an infinite sweetness seemed poured upon 
her wounded heart She felt as though her free v/ill 
would instantly dissolve, and be supplanted by a fainting 
spell of yieldingness. In another moment, as her eyes fell 
on a closed case that contained a faded photograph of 
De Poyanne, she comprehended that her freedom cer- 
tainly was lost forever unless she there and then set up 
a barrier against the man who had the power thus to move 
her, more valid than the poor excuses she had made. 

Why did not Juliette at this supreme moment, when 
the love of her life, the desire of her soul, lay within hand 
grasp, make some effort to attain emancipation, or, on the 
other hand, avow to Raymond Casal that she was not free 
to dispose of her own hand ? No more ideally favorable 
circumstances could have been granted in favor of the 
first course ; no clearer cue could be desired for the sec- 
ond. In either case, how many woes would have been 
spared her, and the rest ! 

But admissions which will utterly destroy a lover’s hope, 
however much in love, women will rarely make to those 
they really care for ! Juliette obeyed the common law. 
Writhing under the supposed necessity of being true to 
her engagement, she was at the same time unable to hold 
out to Casal the most remote encouragement by word of 


Between Two Loves. 


169 


mouth. Her pain determined further subterfuge, and she 
made answer : 

“ You see that I have listened to the end, although it was 
my duty, and I had the right, to stop you at the first. . . . 
I will answer you in one sentence. Under the most 
solemn circumstances, I made a vow, should I ever be 
unhappy enough to become a widow, that I would not 
remarry. By this oath, advisedly taken, I will abide ! ” 

Later, and often, Juliette was doomed to suffer for this 
false excuse, bringing up, as it did, the memory of her 
dead husband. Neither was it in the least like her to 
mingle such a souvenir with such an interview. 

Even as Juliette spoke, Casal’s expression grew more 
grave. He had arrived in the Rue Matignon in the as- 
surance, approved by every passing day for weeks past, 
that he was loved. Neither had he doubted that the 
excuse sent him by Madame de Candolle was a merely 
temporary pretext. Juliette’s actions seemed to him domi- 
nated by tvvo alternate springs : one that she passionately 
interested herself in him and in his fate ; the other, that 
she fought against this feeling on account of the mistrust 
in him created by D’Avangon’s recitals, perhaps by others 
even more damaging, if less spiteful. He had not ex- 
pected an explicit answer to his suit, but he had antici- 
pated some phrase which, in his exalted frame of mind, 
would have sent him into exile not unhopefully, as : 
“ Come to me in six months’ time, and I will talk to you.” 
Already he had made out a plan to pass the time away ; 
he would have gone again upon the high seas with Lord 
Herbert Bohun, in his yacht, so certain was he of his 
love and of Juliette’s unchangeability. As oftentimes 
we see in men who have a fixed idea of woman’s little- 


170 


IVas It Love ? 


ness, when he was fairly in the toils, he thought of the 
one he loved as different from any of her sex, and pas- 
sionately claimed for her those very attributes that he 
denied the others. Not for an instant, therefore, did he 
question this romantic oath that shattered all his hopes. 
How, at another time, he would have mocked a friend 
who had implicitly believed so shallow an invention ! 
But, after all, to credit this excuse of Juliette’s was not 
less strange in Raymond Casal than to offer any woman 
marriage ! 

He told the truth about it. The idea of marriage with 
Juliette had been germinating in his brain for days. 
It was born of the conviction that this woman was with- 
out a lover, and that he, Raymond, never had felt and 
never would feel a passion in any degree similar to that 
which she inspired. 

But he had the tact to see, in spite of the nature of his 
emotions, when to insist and when to give way. He felt 
that Juliette was troubled to the soul, but also that this 
pain would change to anger if he questioned her will too 
far. If she weakened, there might yet be a chance for 
him ; or, in her last adieu, some final phrase might give 
him more than all the ground that he had lost. He 
could not argue very clearly just then, for he was rather 
shaken with emotion and with his reception ; but so ac- 
customed was he to adventures — scarcely, though, of this 
calibre — that he returned to the charge mechanically, as 
an old soldier, at the word of command, struggles for the 
first place in the forlorn hope. 

“ Then, madame, inasmuch as things stand thus, noth- 
ing remains but for me to say farewell, and forever. I 
know what now remains for me to do ! ” . . . 


Between Two Loves. 


171 


Juliette had risen, too. Her nerves were on the rack 
so cruelly, her thoughts so strained, that she saw behind 
these words an awful meaning, and involuntarily cried : 

“Ah ! you must not leave me without swearing that 
you ” 

“Without swearing that I will not kill myself,” said 
Casal, a little ironically. “For that was what you were 
thinking of. Nay, do not be the least afraid of having 
my death on your conscience. ... I simply meant to 
say that nothing’s left me but to go back to my old life. 
It never did amuse me much ; still less will do so now ; 
but it may help me to forget you. Allow me to give you 
one last piece of advice ” — facing Juliette with a stern 
look — “never again play with a man’s heart, however 
much evil has been told you of that man. In the first 
place, it is disloyal, and then you run the risk of having it 
resented. ... I tell you once again, notwithstanding all 
' your friends may think, in my sight the world is nothing 
— nothing ! ” 

“ I ? ” cried Juliette, in agony — “ I play with you ? Ah ! 
you do not think that of me — you cannot think it.” 

She had approached him at these words. Observing 
this, he took her hand. Juliette did not withdraw it. In 
a burning fever was the little hand he pressed so tenderly. 
He drew her to him. Still no repulse. She was at the 
end of her strength, and on the eve of an eternal farewell 
with the man who had the same power over her heart as 
the sun over the convolvulus of morning her courage failed 
her and her love betrayed her. He spoke in penetrating 
and passionate tones : 

“No, no ; it is not so ! You have not played with me. 
Yes, you have been sincere from the first day till this very 


172 


Was It Love ? 


instant. You never have been and you are not a coquette. 
And since you have not played with me, do you know the 
meaning of it all ? . . . Proud as you are, oh ! let me tell 
you : it means that you divined my sentiments, that they 
touched your heart, and that you share them — it means 
you love me ! 

“ Nay, do not answer me. You love me. I have felt 
it so often during these weeks. At this instant I feel it 
anew. If I ever have doubted it, your pardon ! . . . Do 
not speak. And now let me repeat : we love each other. 
I can understand how and when you promised never 
more to marry ; but what avail the promises of children, 
weighed with love, promises that it is neither right to give 
nor to exact, since no one has the right to vow that they 
will cease to live, will cease to breathe, will close their 
souls for evermore to beauty, light, and love ? ” 

Raymond spoke these words with his face close to 
Juliette’s. He drew her nearer yet to him, and felt her 
head decline upon his breast. He bent to press a kiss 
upon her lips. 

Fear prevented the caress. Juliette’s eyelids were 
closed, and her face, her lips, were white as snow. Excess 
of emotion had caused her to faint. 

Raymond Casal lifted her in his arms and laid her 
gently on a sofa, terrified with her pallor, and searching 
for the salts for water. Five minutes passed as he knelt 
by her side, and chafed her lifeless hands. Finally she 
opened her eyes, and passed her hands over her face. 
Seeing Casal on his knees, memory came back to her, 
with all its terrors worse compounded. Drawing herself 
away in dread, she cried : 


Between Two Loves. 


173 


“ Go, go ! I have your word to do what I tell you. 
Go away ; you are killing me ! ” 

He wished to speak, to take her hand. She cried again : 
“ Away ! I have your word ! ” 

He had no opportunity to answer, for Juliette pressed 
the electric button at her elbow. At this he had no 
choice. A footman entered. 

“ Excuse me now. Monsieur Casal,” she said with for- 
mal politeness ; “ one of my fainting spells is threatened. 
I must leave you. . . . 

“ P'ranpois, when you have shown this gentleman the 
door, bid my maid come to me at once. I am exceedingly 
unwell.” 




IX. 

CASAL JEALOUS. 

“ This is a passion working in the dark, 

Freighted with phrensy, apt to miss its mark.” 

—Old Play. 

Not for one moment, during this scene with Juliette, 
did Casal doubt her truthfulness. He believed in the 
supposititious objections of her mother. He believed in 
the widow’s mysterious vow never to remarry. In order 
to avert an explosion of wills between Henry and Ray- 
mond, Madame de Tilli^re had thought of numberless 
excuses, any one of which would have been credited by 
this unbeliever in feminine perfection. The magnetic in- 
fluence this woman had over Casal was such that neither 
that afternoon, nor the next day, nor the next, did any 
counteractive plan enter his head. He had satisfied him- 
self that Juliette loved him, but was unwilling to receive 
his visits ; yet Casal was unable to frame any method of 
setting his affection against Juliette’s resolution. In a 
word, he was over head and ears in love — and the 
awakening was liable to be proportionately terrible. 

Three days had passed since Juliette fainted in his 
arms — three days of devouring anxiety and contradictory 
desires and intentions, during which he had scribbled 


Casal Jealous. 


175 


a dozen love-born sketches of letters to be written to 
Juliette, only to tear them all to flinders, reasoning thus : 

“ If I persecute her, she will only think the worse of 
me ; what is the use of it ? ” 

Casal might have thus continued to suffer in silence for 
weeks, if not months, had not the accidental knowledge 
of a little fact supervened, which produced on him the 
same effect as the mesmeric whisper to awaken has upon 
the somnambulist’s ear. A small, an almost insignificant 
fact ; but is there anything beneath the notice of the 
anxious heart ? 

It might have been two o’clock in the afternoon, and 
Raymond, who had accepted an invitation to breakfast 
with Mos^ at the Cai^ Anglais, to meet an Indian prince- 
let on his way through Paris, was returning alone on foot. 
He had attended the little party chiefly not to be left to 
his own thoughts. The young man — oh ! what a fall was 
there for one of the leaders of the world of Paris ! — was 
following the sidewalk of the Rue de la Paix, in order to 
be able to spy into the passing carriages and the fashion- 
able shops, in the unavowed but boyish hope of setting 
eyes for a few moments on the woman he was ever think- 
ing of. His heart beat faster as he saw the brown bay 
horse and liveries of Juliette’s equipage. The brougham 
was coming out of Rue des Capucines. A block in the 
vehicles enabled him to hasten and present himself on 
the pavement in such a way that Juliette could hardly 
evade his salutation. Instead of her lovely face with its 
tender sapphire eyes and classic profile, he encountered 
the wrinkled visage and fixed gaze of Madame de Nan^ay, 
that ever-suspicious mother who was supposed to have 
shut the door of the Rue Matignon in his face. The 


176 


TVas It Lovet 


good old lady recognized him too ; and it was almost 
with stupefaction that he beheld her not only return his 
bow, but with the most unmistakably gracious inclination 
of the head, and a vitally friendly smile on those lips and 
in those eyes so hardened by a hundred sorrows. A Par- 
isian is not liable to be mistaken in these things. There 
are so many ways a lady may express indifference by a 
bow, but there is only one to show her cordiality. On 
the few occasions Casal had met Madame de Nan9ay, he 
had much pleased and interested her. Perhaps it was by 
his discreet yet genial bearing, more probably because of 
her instinctive perception of the pure affection Raymond 
cherished for her daughter ; possibly, indeed, because in 
spite of all she might hgve heard in his disfavor, she looked 
on Casal as a possible husband for her darling. But now, 
this visible good will exchanged by a look from the woman 
he had been led to believe held him in a holy horror, was 
inexplicable. The contrast between the tale told by Ma- 
dame de Candolle and the evidence of his own eyes was too 
great for any man of sense not to be thereby astounded. 

“ It is very strange,” he thought ; “ why does she salute 
me with such exceeding amiability, after having demanded 
that I should never more cross her threshold ? . . . If 
this is hypocrisy, it is futile. ... I am not the dupe of 
my imagination ; here she was an instant ago, bearing an 
even more evident welcome in her smile than when I 
saw her a fortnight ago in the Rue Matignon for the last 
time. . . . There is no sense in it.” 

Raymond ran up the stairs of the Mirlitons full of 
these reflections ; and in his afternoon bouts of fencing, 
pounded his buttoned foil against the ribs of various ad- 
versaries as spitefully as though they had been rivals for 


Casal Jealous. 


177 


the hand of Juliette. And all the time he kept thinking 
of Madame de Nan9ay’s kindly old face at the carriage- 
window, and repeating automatically ; “ There is no sense 
in it.” On his way home these ideas and doubts developed 
into a monologue. 

“ It is no use talking, my sweet friend. . . . Madame 
your mother has nothing, absolutely nothing, against me. 
So much is evident. Besides, where was my common 
sense to admit that a prudent mamma, who knows the 
world, would ask her daughter not to receive the com- 
promising visits of a certain man ? As if the refusal to 
admit him would not still further compromise her with 
her friends, her guests, and her relations ! 

“ It follows, this discussion with the mother must have 
been a fabrication. Madame de Tilli^re invented such 
and such a method of putting me off. . . . This exercise 
of her imagination is most unlike her simple and straight- 
forward character, unless — unless ” 

The hypothesis staggered him. It was painful in the 
extreme, since it implied that Juliette, not to mince the 
matter, had lied to him. When a woman has told you a 
die about one thing, there is nothing on earth to prevent 
mer telling you a lie about twenty. In Shakespeare’s 
magnificent study of jealousy, the incomparable analyst 
of humanity’s passion has not neglected to mark the in- 
fluence of analogy on suspicion. The primary ^speck of 
virus is inoculated when Brabantio says : 

“ She has deceived her father, and may thee ! ” And 
lago harps upon the same deception, and on others like 
it. Every man who has loved knows this ; that the first 
mistrust marks a mental Rubicon never more to be re- 
crossed. Thus a sort of animal instinct impels us to fight 


178 


Was It Level 


against our realization of the first lie. We prefer, as long 
as we can, to ignore it with the vague reservation that 
there are certain allowances we wot not of that must be 
made. Casal, who had too manly a mind not to prefer 
the truth, however bitter, to ever so sweet an illusion, con- 
tinued his pitiless analysis : 

“Unless what? Well, and w'hy should she not? I 
have been taken in ; that is all there is about it. Better 
men than I have been bewitched by women who had 
neither Juliette’s eyes, smile, voice, nor manners. It 
was absolutely natural on her part to lie to me ; for she 
wished to get s hut of m^ , and I had given her no excuse. 
It was therefore necessary for her to invent one ; that was 
only logical. 

“ But why deny my visits ? . . . Because of that oath 
of hers ? A vow made to her husband as he was going 
into battle ? . . . This story hasn’t much more sense in 
it than the other ! When I began to pay attention to her, 
she knew just as much about the vow as ever she did. 
My courtship could have in view only one end — marriage ; 
otherwise she would have closed the door in my face. 
The oath existed then, if it existed ever. And yet she let 
me go on. . . . If it existed ever ? And if it doesn’t ex- 
ist ? If it is merely a phantasmagoric oath, as her mother’s 
objections to me were imaginary ? . . . Come, let us see 
what was below-board in this sudden rupture ! Monsieur 
Casal, they have been amusing themselves with thee as 
though thou’dst been a Brittany joskin !’’... 

This use of trivial and slang terms in his soliloquies 
marked the disappearance from the scene of Casal senti- 
mental, and the reappearance of Casal the cynic. An 
awakening breath had opened the eyes of the sleep- 


Casal Jealous. 


179 


walker. The crisis of this first disenchantment was so 
acutely felt that our ex-cherub of the Rue Matignon spent 
the evening with Lord Herbert Bohun, in the endeavor, 
not altogether vain, to chase away regrets and disappoint- 
ments v/ith the whip of wine. For a dissipation of this 
kind, no choicer companion could be chosen than the 
alcohol-loving Englishman, who poured the different vin- 
tages down his throat with the I'egularity of an automa- 
ton, and was able, at the finish of the evening, to come to 
“ attention ” with the air of an old campaigner. Casal did 
not indulge in confidences ; in fact, to do so would have 
been superfluous, for on these occasions Lord Herbert 
was neither a talker nor listener. He had systematized 
what the Germans call the “ brandy passion,” and could 
count on the fingers of one hand the evenings in the last 
twelve months when he went to bed sober. The only per- 
son in the world Bohun seemed to care for was Casal. 
How came this .? Was it possible that this taste for drink 
and this odd friendship both sprang from one cause ? 

Lord Herbert in his youth had been the lover of a lady 
who deceived him, with all Paris for a witness. Casal 
had been the only one to warn him. He had never for- 
gotten Raymond for this intended kindness, and in his 
maddest moments always seemed to have a vague notion 
of what was passing in his crony’s mind. This very night, 
on parting, he wrung Raymond's hand, and with the light- 
ning glance of inspiration and intuition that so often 
comes to men who are much the worse for drink, muttered 
in English : ^'‘She was false as water ! ” And to Lord 
Bohun, for anybody to be as false as water meant really 
something very false indeed ; for water was a thing for 
which he had no use, save as a diluent of “ Jamieson ” or 


i8o 


Was It Love ? 


“ Kinahan,” and for his morning “ tub,” and even then 
he salted it. It happened that Herbert Bohun’s tipsy 
lucubration on womankind chimed only too well with 
Raymond’s sentiments ; and it was with difficulty, in the 
midst of his cups, that he retained sufficient self-control 
to keep his own counsel. 

“ Yes, Herbert is right,” he thought, early the next 
morning, spurring T^meraire to the top of his bent 
through the deserted Bois, under a gray and forbidding 
sky that still further dispirited his wine-soddened nerves. 
“ The best woman on earth isn’t worth one pang. . . . 
But Juliette ! — a hypocrite ? It must be so, for she has 
twice lied to me ; and, with the same facility, could go on 
lying to me as often as occasion rose. Behind this rup- 
ture there lurks something else. . . . What can it be ? ” 

He would neither answer the self-propounded question 
nor speak the word that preyed upon his heart. But he 
recognized dimly that the influence of one of his own sex 
was the only possible key to the riddle of the lady’s con- 
duct. As an outward mark of this internal tumult, the 
noble T^meraire arrived at its quarters bathed in foam, 
gaping pink nostrils for sufficient breath. 

In the next place, Casal, at two o’clock, propelled by 
some internal power beyond his control, directed his foot- 
steps to the Rue Matignon. Wherefore ? . . . He knew 
in advance that in all likelihood Madame de Tilli^re had 
left orders that he should not be admitted. But he 
reckoned that there was still one chance in a hundred 
the order had not been given. In that case he would 
see her, and demand to know the true and genuine motive 
of her strange conduct from herself. With emotion he 
recognized the long, ivy-covered wall, the Mansard roof 


Casal Jealous. 


i8i 


of the old house, the very smoke that curled so peace- 
fully upward from, perhaps, her salon. He entered the 
courtyard without speaking to the concierge, marching 
straight to the glass porch he knew so well. Wishes were 
so much the ancestors of his thoughts in this case that it 
was with a sort of stupid pain he received his answer, a 
reply his common sense might have assured him of, from 
the inscrutable footman : 

“ Madame de Tilliere is not at home.” 

“I might have known as much,” thought Casal, “and 
it was but a mean-spirited action on my part to come here 
for the news ! ” 

He went off at this thought, with the listless step of 
a man without an object, when, looking up with the 
hunter’s falcon eye, he recognized coming in the oppo- 
site direction, on the other side of the street, a gentleman 
whom he did not know particularly well, and with whom 
he exchanged a hesitating bow. 

“ Parbleu ! ” he cried, suddenly, “ it is the Count Henry 
de Poyanne, ... I have hit the nail on the head this 
time by sheer accident. ... He is friendly with Juliette, 
I remember Madame de Candolle speaking of him several 
times. . . . Perhaps he is going to her house ? . , . I 
will wait and see if they let him in. . . . If they do, I 
need no longer doubt why the door was closed upon 
me.” 

He turned his head to survey the man in whom as yet 
he hardly suspected a rival, and saw that Poyanne, on the 
threshold of the house he had just quitted, had turned, 
too, and was scanning him in the same sort of way. The 
two men stood facing each other for a few moments, mo- 
tionless, their eyes each other's hostile messengers. Then 


i 82 


Was It Love! 


the Count pushed open the entrance door, and was lost 
to sight. 

“ Aha ! ” exclaimed Casal, “ I have you, my gentle- 
man. She receives hun, but not me. Why on earth, 
though, should he take so much notice of me ? On the 
rare occasions we have met at Pauline’s, we hardly spoke 
to each other. . . . Can Madame de Tilliere have let 
out that I am no longer on her visiting list ? On what 
terms are these two ? It is the only one of her friends I 
have not seen in her company. We have spoken of him. 
Let me see, let me see : how, and in what way ? ” 

Suddenly he remembered a little scene which at the 
time had passed unnoted ; but this meeting at the thresh- 
old brought it back to his recollection as vividly as though 
it had occurred the previous evening. It occurred at Ma- 
dame de Candolle’s. Juliette was in one of her rare happy 
moods. The Countess had accidentally pronounced the 
name of the great orator, and Casal had set himself to 
make a little harmless fan of him. W’ith his usual tact, 
he instantly perceived that he was on the wrong track, 
for neither of the two friends answered him a word, and 
Madame de Tilli^re’s expression had changed to an un- 
mistakable frown. The talk shifted, and Juliette still 
only spoke in monosyllables. Casal remembered every 
detail of the scene. . . . What connection, then, had 
these impressions with what was now upon his mind ? 
He could hardly sum up, as yet. But the image of Poy- 
anne standing at the portal, taking such particular notice 
of himself, evicted, was with him all the afternoon. 
Having encountered the young marquis in the Tuileries 
tennis-court, he by and by casually asked : 

“ You know De Poyanne, Norbert ? ” 


Casal Jealous. 


183 


“ Very well. Why do you ask ? ” 

Because I am to dine with him at an early date. 
What sort of a man is he ? ” 

“ Talented, but ” — and the young marquis made a slang 
gesture with his tennis-bat — “ in the clouds.” 

“ And how does he stand with the ladies ? ” 

“ One of the elect. His wife ran away from him, and 
lives at Florence. As for him, none of us knows if he 
has formed another attachment. Still,” said the hand- 
some boy, laughing, “we have sometimes thought that 
Madame de Candolle had a sneaking fondness for him. 
. . . She used to be in the gallery every time he spoke, 
with one of her friends that put in an occasional appear- 
ance in the Countess’s opera-box, a blonde, rather insipid, 
but glorious eyes. Do you catch on ? ” 

“ Hardly,” answered Raymond, who instantly recog- 
nized Juliette in this thumb-nail sketch. “But,” added 
he, “ it is at this very Madame de Candolle’s house that 
we are to dine — or, rather, were to have dined — in com- 
pany. He was away in the country, and the party fell 
through.” 

“ He has been back some five days, or so,” said De 
M61e ; “ we sit together on a parliamentary commission. 
. . . He was on a political campaign in the Doubs, 
which turned out a rank fizzle.” 

This dialogue between the two tennis players was 
interrupted by innumerable mistakes in the game com- 
mitted by Casal, at other times one of the best players 
in Paris. Raymond, in fact, was on thorns. His sus- 
picions had a new field, and a very weedy field it was, 
to play about in ! When a man ‘is growing genuinely 
jealous, his suspicious instincts become almost as acute 


184 


Was It Love 7 


as those of a wild Indian on the war-path. How quickly 
was he now approaching the fatal end of the chase ! How 
infallibly the broken twigs, the foot-printed grass, led him 
on to the verge of the odious quarry ! 

The encounter with Madame de Nanqay had caused 
him to doubt Juliette’s first excuse. This doubt brought 
up another — it led him to mistrust the story of the vow ; 
and that second suspicion, to begin to doubt Juliette’s 
veracity all round the compass. The lightning exchange 
of looks betwixt himself and De Poyanne focussed his 
attention on that friend of hers. Finding out how he 
stood with the sex, and that his speeches were attended 
every night by Juliette, and then that the return of the 
Count coincided with his own dismissal, was more than 
enough to superinduce a new and still more acute attack 
of jealousy. His Parisian experience, so long charmed to 
sleep by the enchantments of a new and novel love, ren- 
dered the crisis more violent. It went against his grain 
to suspect the woman who was so dear to him ; but that 
evening, unable to bear even the mechanical society of 
Lord Bohun, he soliloquized in his own rooms, poisoning 
himself, contrary to his wont, with the fumes of innumer- 
able opiatized cigarettes : 

“Yes, there is certainly a man behind her resolutions. 
It is too clear, too plain, too mathematical to be further 
doubted, . . . And to induce Juliette to take any more 
energetic step than to hint to me to come not quite so 
often, somebody must have interfered with an ‘ Either 
him — or me ! ’ . . . And that somebody was Poyanne ? 
Warned by whom? No doubt D’Avangon ; it is too like 
his handiwork. Then, his look ! But she has no lover ; 
or, if she has, she is the greatest jilt that I ever met — even I, 


Casal Jealous. 


^85 


Raymond Casal.” And he laughed at himself for his cre- 
dulity. “ Why should she not be a flirt any more than the 
rest of them ? It must have been confoundedly amusing 
to her to take me in, to roll me through the mud with her 
little feet, after all the evil she had heard of me. She 
had nothing better on hand this spring. I was an interest- 
ing clown. . . . Now the real heavy man has taken the 
stage. The poor old mother, the awful oath, the turnip- 
and-candle ghost of the dead soldier — I swallowed them 
one and all, and the game is played. . . . 

“ But, no ; she was in earnest. Cross and banner only 
forced her door at the beginning. At my first visit, her 
changing color ; her manner at the Opera ; then at Ma- 
dame de Candolle’s ; then at her own house — all so natu- 
ral, so non-theatrical ! Her sadness at the last. Why is 
she so much bound up, then, in De Poyanne, while all 
the time she loves me ? ” Such thoughts drove him to 
the verge of madness. 

“ This sort of uncertainty cannot continue. I must and 
will know all ! ” he cried. 

How many thousand lovers, husbands, .tortured almost 
to death by doubt, have breathed the same defiance to 
pursuing fate ! 

To know, to hold in hand the proof, with which one 
can at the long last weigh up the sort of person we have 
had to deal with— this, to the jealous mind, is what the 
running water is to the parched desert wanderer; the 
house of refuge to the frozen, famished vagabond ; the 
solid land to the storm-defeated mariner ! To know, to 
be quite sure ! 

Looking at every possible side of this question of relation- 
ship between De Poyanne and Madame de Tilli^re, Casal 


IVas It Love ? 


1 86 


came to the conclusion that the Countess Gabrielle, no 
doubt, knew all about it. And she was the only person 
with whom he was free to talk upon the subject. But how 
to snatch the secret from that faithful friend ? This was 
how he solved the problem, after an infinity of thought : 
Gabrielle really loved her friend of the Rue Matignon. If 
there was anything between those two, the Countess would 
now be certainly anxious to knov/ how he, Raymond, re- 
garded the question after all that had occurred. Under 
these circumstances, suppose he went to her direct, with 
the object of startling her into an explanation, and were to 
say to her : “ I know all.” Then he could profit by her 

surprise to name some person for whom he was very well 
aware Juliette could entertain no particular regard. The 
Countess would defend Madame de Tilli^re. Then he 
would burst out v/ith De Poyanne’s name, in order to see 
if her defence was identical or dissimilar. Mistress of 
herself as that lady was, there were many chances of 
disconcerting her, and she would repel more vigorously 
the true than the false accusation. The ingenuity of the 
plan so approved itself to Casal that he resolved to exe- 
cute it that same day ; and by two o’clock, accordingly, he 
was on his way to the salon of the Rue de Tilsitt, where, 
in the society of Madame de Candolle and her lovely 
friend, he had tasted so many sweet hours of innocent 
companionship. The souvenir made him sick at heart. 
As he entered, Gabrielle, he saw, was not alone ; Alfred 
Mose was paying a visit. Hardly could Casal conceal his 
chagrin and impatience, such was the disorder into which 
jealousy had thrown him. Happily, Mos6 possessed a 
fund of finesse which enabled him to see that his young 
friend had something particular to say to Gabrielle ; and, 


Casal Jealous. 


187 


after remaining long enough to show that he did not feel 
he was being uncivilly expelled, he took his leave. The 
effort Madame de Candolle made to retain him was of no 
avail, for he believed her kindness was assumed, whereas 
the poor woman, frightened by the expression of Casal’s 
eyes, and guessing what was coming, would have been 
only too glad if Mos6 had remained. 

Raymond commenced the attack with a brusqueness 
he very properly guessed would be the best method of 
sui-prising the Countess into the betrayal of the secret that 
was to slay his love. 

“ Do you know,” he said, as soon as the banker was 
gone, “ it was not nice of you and Madame de Tilliere to 
make fun of me in the way it has pleased you to do.” 

He spoke in his most indifferent tone, not as one who 
has unmasked an act of hypocrisy, and asks no better than 
to confront the one who has misled him ; but he was less 
successful in concealing the cruel irony that shone from 
his stern eyes. It was with strange anxiety that Gabrielle 
replied : “ Pray, explain yourself.” And added : “ When 
you speak of my friend, Madame de Tilliere, and myself, 
you need not adopt such a satirical air ; it is sufficiently 
misplaced.” 

At every risk, the brave and haughty little woman must 
carry things with a high hand, if only in order to cut short 
the interview, and the more so if he turned and attacked 
her from the expected quarter. Casal suspected some- 
thing ; that was clear. How much ? 

“ No,” repeated Raymond, “ it was not nice of either 
of you. Why mix Madame de Nangay’s name up with the 
business when it would have been so exceedingly easy for 
your friend to have told me bravely, simply, ‘ Monsieur, 


i88 


Was It Lovet 


you are a gentleman. I trust you will know how to 
receive what I tell you. I am not free to receive your 
attentions. Your visits annoy me, and upset my life. 
Pray do not call on me again,’ ” 

“ You continue to speak in riddles,” said Madame de 
Candolle, frowning and taking up a piece of crochet-work, 
“ but perhaps it is better so. . . . You have neglected 
me for several days ; you have returned to your old asso- 
ciations, without doubt, and I fear that in finding your 
way to the Rue Tilsitt, you have mistaken the street.” 

“ It is very well, madame. If you desire,” he went on, 
still more harshly, “ that I should put the dots on the i’s, 
I will go straight to the point. ... I know — do you fol- 
low me ? — I know that Madame de Nangay had nothing 
to do with her daughter’s resolutions. It was a man, and 
not a woman, who demanded that I should be debarred 
the right of way, and I know his name.” 

If he had expected to surprise some tell-tale emotion 
on the delicate face of the Countess, he was soon unde- 
ceived, for her placid eyes followed her lissome fingers on 
the needle as though the other were only giving her the 
ordinary news of the day. Her lips remained unmoved ; 
they even showed a slight expression of disdain. But, 
faithful friend though she was to Juliette, she was a 
woman ; therefore, had a woman’s curiosity. And she 
committed the mistake of allowing Raymond to keep on, 
in order to know more. 

“ Ah ! ” he insisted, “ you cannot answer me. But, 
nevertheless, you know that it is rather hard on me to be 
the scapegoat of the jealousies of whom ? — of a Monsieur 
F^lix Mirant, a painter of peonies and tulips, who consid- 
ers himself a grand seigneur because he dresses in velvet. 


Casal Jealous. 


189 


and makes a hundred thousand francs a year by throwing 
paint-pots at white canvas.” 

By these exaggerated traits of the man, Casal thought 
to substantiate his fictitious jealousy with the Countess, 
and to surprise her to a demonstration. While speaking 
of Mirant, he was all the while thinking of Poyanne, and he 
had no difficulty in lending the requisite note of scolding 
to his voice, nor in causing his face to bear the outward 
semblances of love’s disquiet. The Countess fell into the 
trap. Reassured by the false scent upon which Raymond 
had set out a-hunting, and thinking all danger over for 
the day, she laughed a little laugh, as one might do over 
a child who has said something at once wrong and 
funny. 

“ But you are moonstruck, my poor friend, moonstruck 
to the verge of lunacy. Mirant with rights of lock and 
key over Madame de Tilliere ! I cannot even feel angry 
with you ! Mirant ? Why not D’Artelles ? Why not 
Prosny ? Why not D’Avanpon ? While you are at it, 
better distrust D’Avanpon. I assure you that the as- 
siduities of a man so dangerous to the ladies would be 
an excellent subject for one who is such a judge of char- 
acter as you have turned out.” 

“Well, and suppose it isn't Mirant,” said Casal, with 
such meaning sarcasm that Madame de Candolle once 
more cast down her eyes, and drew the deep breath of 
a mental wrestler. 

“ If it isn’t Mirant ? ” repeated she, almost timidly. 

“ It is the friend of hers who came back precisely on 
the day I got my walking-ticket, Monsieur Le Comte 
Henri de Poyanne.” 

“ Listen, Monsieur Casal,” answered Gabrielle, this time 


IVas It Love! 


I go 


without a smile. “ I have ever defended you when others 
attacked you ; have ever said that you were better than 
your reputation, which, by the way, is detestable. Just 
now I was unwilling to take you seriously. . . . But if 
you mean seriously in this atrocious way to suspect a 
woman who happens to be my best friend, whom you have 
known through me and at my house, and if you are going 
about hawking your calumnies through Paris as you have 
hawked them here, let me tell you that it is a vile, abomi- 
nable action, and I will not allow it. . . . Madame de 
Tilliere has been absolutely loyal to you. She had cer- 
tain presentiments I overruled. She received you with- 
out the faintest coquetry. Certain difficulties with her 
mother rendered relations with you distressing, almost 
impossible. . . . She told you of them frankly, and in- 
stead of obeying her you calumniate her, and tease your 
imagination for innuendoes on her friends. It is an insult 
to us both, monsieur — an insult ! ” 

“ You are in the right, madame,” said Raymond after 
a long silence, “ and I ask you to forgive me. I promise 
you,” he added, in a low tone, “ that I will never speak to 
you of Madame de Tilliere again.” 

“ And that you will never believe what you have said 
of her ? ” insisted the Countess. 

“And that I will never believe what- 1 have said of 
her,” replied Casal, who was now willing to turn the con- 
versation into other channels. But this time he did not 
succeed in deceiving Gabrielle, who, nevertheless, sought 
to know no more. She reproached herself bitterly for 
not having used the only weapon that will ward off the 
suspicions of a jealous man— silence. And she felt, with- 
out quite guessing Raymond’s ruse, that she had said too 


Casal Jealous. 


191 


much. For a long, long time after Casal had gone, she 
sat with her hand supporting her fair head, thinking of 
the words that had passed, and wondering if she had bet- 
ter warn Juliette of her danger. For that there was fresh 
danger she had the same presentiment as when at first 
she insisted that Casal would not believe in the concocted 
excuses. Gabrielle was alarmed at the unexpected depths 
of passion in the man’s nature. 

“ Yes,” she concluded ; “ I will go to the Rue Matignon, 
and at once, to warn her. After all, he can do nothing, 
save annoy her with a letter or a scene. How did he find 
it out, I wonder ? ” 

This trial of wit with Madame de Candolle was a further 
proof of what Casal before had dimly thought. By de- 
fending her friend so lightly against the Mirant supposi- 
tion, so spitefully at mention of Poyanne’s name, the arena 
for jealousy was now quite circumscribed. It was clear 
the Countess had not attached equal gravity to the two 
insinuations. Why, unless the second was the truer? 
As Casal emerged from the Rue Tilsitt, he suffered from 
that renewed fever the jealous know so well — when some 
fresh fact has fired their already morbid imaginings. “ No 
more doubt of it ! ” he cried, as he turned on foot into 
the Bois de Boulogne to try and chase away his mental 
pain by one of those forced marches that seldom, under 
like circumstances, fatigue the limbs. “ Poyanne is the 
man who has had me turned away from her house ! ” 

The next few days Casal passed in company with his 
friend Lord Bohun, a prey to inconsidered jealousy. He 
was not sufficiently acquainted with the past to be able to 
reconstitute Juliette’s history, and knew nothing of the 


192 


JVas It Lovel 


terrible struggle that had so recently been going on within 
her, and was still in progress — that desperate duel to the 
death between love and pity, between her natural longing 
for happiness and the necessity of being faithful to her 
engagement. Juliette, tenderest of mortals, and simplest 
in intention, appeared to him an enigma of duplicity, as 
monstrous now as she had seemed charming hitherto. 
Was he enough of a victim? Had he with sufficient folly 
judged her noble, dignified, and innocent, while all the 
time she had been using him as a puppet, to pass away her 
leisure hours till her lover came home from the country, 
watching the effect upon him of her clever conjuring ? 

A lover, yes ; but he had even yet no proof. And proof 
he still demanded. 

Such was the temper this man had wrought himself into 
as, a week after his visit to Madame de Candolle, he found 
himself in his fauteuil at the Theatre Frangais, the last Fri- 
day of the season. In spite of the suffering he was under- 
going, sprung of a fighting race, he sought every occasion 
for company ; and, after spending the day in his customary 
haunts of sport and exercise, he would pass the evenings 
in the treadmill of society, just as if the twin demons of 
love and jealousy were not tugging at his coat-tails all the 
while ! 

And there was always the chance at the opera or thea- 
tre of a sight of Juliette, though he never, as yet, had 
encountered her since she fell fainting in his arms, and 
woke to send him from her door. In vain he tried to 
drown the pleading voice that told him J uliette was good 
and pure. The voice of charity — if jealousy would only 
listen ! — what tender echoes does it not awaken in our 
hearts in favor of the one we so misjudge! In spite of 


Casal Jealous ? 


193 


his harsher judgments, Casal had to admit in this absence 
a certain sign that Juliette’s suffering in their latest inter- 
view was not assumed. [One of those inexplicable super- 
stitions lovers sometimes have^ convinced him that she 
had not quitted Paris. All could not yet be over between 
them, he even hoped, without a fresh, decisive explana- 
tion. 

Madame de Candolle’s box remained empty. All of a 
sudden, three rows in front of him, and on the left, his 
wandering eyes encountered the visage, turned toward 
him, too, of Henry de Poyanne. As in the Rue Ma- 
tignon, this look only lasted a few seconds, and the Count 
instantly appeared reoccupied with what was going forward 
on the stage, Raymond was so placed that he had no 
need to turn in order to see his rival. He could, without 
attracting attention, observe every detail of the orator’s 
figure, his slender shoulders, his thoughtful head, his 
worn hands, now fingering the opera-glass with what 
Casal not wrongly deemed a touch of nervous preoccupa- 
tion. He was himself put out. (jWhen we come into the 
actual presence of the man we think possesses the heart 
of the woman we love, in some the principle of^ repulsion 
chills us to the marrow ; in others it rouses a sustained rage, 
to the red eyes of which murder seems a likely pastime. 
'I'he strangest frenzies have us for the moment in their 
grip, so that we seem no longer ourselves, but human 
beings with the soul of some wild anima^ Thus, as he 
contemplated the rival who had never been off his mind 
for so many weary weeks, a singular, a mad idea seized, 
suddenly, Casal. He had an intuition that he saw before 
him a chance to get the long-desired proof. This time he 
would turn the doubtful probabilities of Madame de Can- 
13 


194 


Was It Lovel 


dolle's conversation into utter certainty. He was aware 
that Poyanne had behaved as a hero during the war, had 
fought a duel at Besan^on with the man to whom he owed 
his life’s unhappiness. He had, then, in front of him a 
man too brave to put up with the least affront. 

“ Let me reason,” he thought. “ If I accost him be- 
tween the acts, and, without a witness, see if he will put 
up with one of those contemptuous insults that no man 
of his character tolerates, unless there are overwhelming 
reasons in the background, I shall shortly know all. If 
it was really he who put me out of doors, at any price 
he will be afraid that this woman’s name should be pro- 
nounced between us, or on account of us, and he will hes- 
itate to fight me. If there is nothing between them, he 
will stop me at the first word, and then, either I will run 
him through, or he me. . . . One never knows before- 
hand, which. ... At this moment, a duel would amuse 
me. And I shall have my proof. If he sings small, it 
is indeed a proof, and undeniable.” 

No sooner was this insensate idea conceived than exe- 
cuted. If Raymond Casal’s every nerve was strained as 
when a man is about to fight another knife to knife, 
not one of his acquaintances that shook him by the hand 
after the curtain had fallen was aware of it. He posted 
himself at the passage-entry, in order to make certain of 
Poyanne. Courteously he accosted him. 

“ Will you do me the honor, sir, of according me a 
moment’s conversation ? Here, if you please.” And he 
indicated an angle in the lobby that was out of the way 
of the moving crowd. 

“ I am listening, monsieur,” answered Ue Poyanne, 
visibly startled at this style of conversation. He had the 


Casal Jealous. 


195 


immediate feeling that his interlocutor wished to speak 
about Juliette, but thought : “ It is impossible. Besides, 
he is too much a gentleman.” 

But the other spoke in a low tone, as if merely exchang- 
ing some little confidence, or club invention ; 

“ It is a very simple matter, monsieur, and I will not 
keep you long. Only, I want to know if you have any 
particular reason for scrutinizing me as you did just now, 
repeatedly, and with an insistance which, I regret to tell 
you, doesn’t suit me in the very least.” 

“ There is some misunderstanding, monsieur,” said 
Poyanne. He was very pale, and made a visible effort to 
preserve his calmness. “ For I forgot, since the begin- 
ning of the last act, that you were in the theatre.” 

“ I am extremely sorry to have to contradict you, mon- 
sieur,” returned Raymond. “ I repeat that you fixed 
your eyes on me offensively several consecutive times ; 
and as this is not the first time such a thing has occurred, 
I wished to tell you to your face that I am ready, if 
need be, to prevent you from looking at me that way 
again.” 

As he pronounced these words, carrying with them such 
extraordinary and uncalled-for insolence, he was able to 
follow, on the Count’s face, the strife between outraged 
manhood and the firm resolution to reveal nothing. Poy- 
anne perceived, and reasoned to himself : “ Casal knows 
that Madame de Tilli^re has sent him away on my ac- 
count. He guesses, perhaps, that she is engaged to me ; 
he cannot know it. A man capable of this sudden out- 
break would be certain to give to the world her name, if 
it came to a duel. I must, at all hazards, avoid that.” 

He tamed himself anew, and said : 


196 


Was It Lovet 


“ Once more, I affirm, monsieur, that you are assuredly 
mistaken, I have never had the slightest motive to look 
at you offensively, and I have no intention of beginning 
to do so after an interview which has not the least oc- 
casion, therefore, to prolong itself, and which I beg you 
now to terminate.” 

“ As things stand,” said Casal, insultingly, “ I see I 
have no longer any need to talk further to a — coward ! ” 

This phrase left his lips in spite of himself. It was 
absolutely foreign to his plan of simple inquiry. But 
finding the Count at once so troubled, and so much the 
master of his trouble, so sensible and so deliberately dis- 
posed to avoid a quarrel, he had, as in the interview with 
Gabrielle, a further proof of his suspicions. This sufficed 
to raise his fury and jealousy to such a pitch that the irre- 
parable word slipped from him without reflection. Of 
course he knew ho man of honor, lover or not, would let 
it pass. 

“ Monsieur,” said the Count, “ I answered you as I 
did just now because I thought you spoke in good faith. 
I see you seek to fix a serious quarrel on me— and that 
you wish a meeting. You shall have it. I know not why 
you meddle with one who never has interfered with you. 
But I do not allow any person in the world to talk to me 
as you have done ; and I shall have the honor to send 
you two of my friends — on this one condition,” said he, 
imperiously, that you exact from your seconds what I 
shall demand of mine : their word of honor this affair re- 
mains a secret.” 

“ That is understood, monsieur,” said Casal, and as if 
to prove to his interlocutor the sincerity of his promise, 
he called to Mose, who was passing : 


Casal Jealous. 


197 


“ Voyo/iSf Alfred, do you remember the precise date 
they played that piece, U Acr abate., I think, by Feuillet, 
in which the Bressant made such a hit ? We were having 
a discussion about it, De Poyanne and I. He sticks out 
it was ’72, and I say it was ’73. Which was it ? ” 




X. 


BEFORE THE DUEL. 

“ I had not loved thee, dear, so well. 

Loved I not honor more.” 

— Lovelace. 

On the morning after the unrehearsed scene at the 
Theatre Franyais that was destined so abruptly to turn 
poor Juliette’s romance to melodrama, she was taking the 
air in the pretty garden of the Rue Matignon. Great 
clusters of sweet acacia filled the breeze with their deli- 
cious aroma, whose perfume the sad lady breathed half 
unconsciously. Her looks seemed to caress the familiar 
ivy, the leaves of mulberry and peach trees taking on a 
deeper green beneath the summer sun, and the fair dis- 
play of red and white roses that gloried in the gardener’s 
care. Since her last interview with Casal, Juliette had 
not felt herself ; and it was to her distress on distress, 
and pain on pain, that she was not able to hide entirely 
from Poyanne the melancholy that oppressed her. How 
to deceive her [lover’s clairvoyance ?J He was so affec- 
tionate that the task seemed easy. But (when love is 
sublimed to a certain intensity, it becomes as morbidly 
sensitive as jealousy itself.J Poyanne began to suspect 
that Juliette no longer loVed him for himself, but out of 
mercy. \How can true love be imitated? It is not pos- 
sible to stage the play of hearts. A woman’s voice, who 


Before the Duel. 


199 


truly loves, grows tenderer than her words, her eyes than 
both ; how is it possible to simulate these things ? She 
makes haste to show her sweetheart she is happy, so that 
he may be so. If love is wanting, all her efforts are but 
lost hypocrisy. By a dread divination, he will discern 
beneath the moving accent the effort to produce it, be- 
neath the innocent caress the repugnance with which it 
was initiated. Can we contemn these ties that do but 
prove affection ? Have we any right to reproach another 
because they cannot feel as we do? But if we keep silence 
in this discontent, as Henry de Poyanne with Juliette, 
we fall as he did into that desponding state in face of 
which every word and every gesture of the other seems to 
cry : “ Yes, you are pitied, but no longer loved.” For 
the Count, the grief of this was doubled by another 
dark impression he tried in vain to supersede. A fresh 
conversation with D’Avangon had revealed to him that 
Casal had been definitively refused admittance to the Rue 
Matignon. The old diplomatist was not deceived. 

“ To be certain, I had only to note the look he gave 
me at^the Petit Cercle,” D’Avan^on exclaimed, all the 
while washing his hands with invisible soap in imper- crcr ^ 
ceptible water.”! 

So Madame de Tilli^re had kept her promise. No 
longer did she receive Casal. Even without confirmation 
of the news, Henry was already sure of it. His encoun- 
ter with Raymond at the outer door already proved it. 

But if, having made such short work of Raymond Casal, 

Juliette did not regret the action, why these suppressed 
signs of inner suffering, inexplicable unless she was con- 
cealing in her heart some strange compunction ? If it is 
bitter enough for a lover to sum up these danger-signals 


200 


Was It Lovei 


even when he knows their cause, it is trebly trying to 
view the paling cheek, the tired eyelids, and the down- 
drawn lips, these flickerings in the flame of life that we 
adore, witho»t knowing the hidden reason. How, then, 
if, besides all these torments, the lover has the added 
weight upon his mind: “Perhaps she is dying of love- 
melancholy for another ! ” 

( This is the master-form of jealousy, the only species of 
that passion known to noble souls. Its sphere with these 
I lies not in actions, but in sentiments. It has for principle 
the thought that we no longer suffice for the happiness 
and welfare of the beloved one. It brings about no crisis 
of violent actions such as Casal was suffering just then. 
Yet slowly, inevitably, it saps the forces of the soul. This 
sort of jealousy wraps us in an unbreathable atmosphere, 
from which we emerge, if ever we do emerge, incapable of 
hope, insusceptible to joy, our very hearts outworn and 
, withered. Not many days had passed between D’Avan- 
9on’s denunciation of Casal and the hostile interview at 
the theatre, but that short time had sufficed to plunge 
De Poyanne into a state of far more profound depression 
than he had been in before his recent journey to Besan9on. 
He was already forced to look this terrible supposition in 
the face : 

“ Juliette loves Casal, but she will not avow it ; and if 
she holds to me, it is for very charity.” 

How quickly his lover’s spirit was in arms at the detested 
word ! Every morning he promised himself a final expla- 
nation with Juliette ; each time he viewed her suffering 
face he recoiled at the idea of questioning her. He 
trembled lest such a conference should do her a fresh in- 
jury, and he held his peace. But the look of his eyes, 


Before the Duel. 


201 


''Z . . . . 

and the dejected havior of his visage, his very silences, be- 
trayed his sadness and distrust ; and the unhappy widow, 
on her side, was able to interpret these signs of concealed 
anxiety from her knowledge of the Count’s character : 

“ Henry is not even happy. I have plucked from my 
heart a love that was so infinitely dear — for what ? For 
nothing. And I have thrown the other back upon his 
wicked ways — for what ? For nothing. Woe is me ! ” 

In such moments Juliette comprehended, with a never- 
ending dread, the truth of the moral situation, that her 
renunciation of the love of a life for the satisfaction of a 
passionate pity had failed to heal her wounded heart — a 
heart that palpitated, bled at once for these two men ; 
though neither could she render happy the one, for whom 
she had almost crucified the other. 

Madame de Tilli^re was at this stage on the highway 
to despair when Gabrielle came to load her with a last dis- 
aster : the news that Casal was upon the track of truth. 
The nervous seizure that resulted was so acute, her ener- 
gies gave way. Juliette had borne up to the last against 
a series of emotional disappointments that were slowly 
eating up her strength, and when at length she gave 
way, science had no restorative. She passed forty-eight 
hours reclining on a couch, motionless as the dead, inca- 
pable of thinking, feeling. On the morning we see her 
feebly promenading the garden, she was yet so weak in 
consequence of this crisis it was with difficulty that she 
noted the quaint attractions of her favorite flowers, spring- 
ing into full bloom in this fair May, and the chatter of 
the happy birds, ever repeating to herself such phrases 
as: “What will Casal think of me?” and, “What will 
he do ? ” 


202 


Was It Love 7 


What would he think ? — as if she did not know full 
well ! Since she could not show him the links that bound 
her to the past, he would certainly conclude she was the 
most cunning of coquettes, the falsest of flirts. In her 
semi-delirium, she went so far as to conceive the most dan- 
gerous projects, most foreign to her nature and her prin- 
ciples — to write and pour her heart’s history out before 
him, to write and name a rejidezvous for explanations. 

“ Would he believe me, if I told him all ? ” she cried. 
How he had found out what he knew already puzzled her 
indeed. For her now to try to justify her actions was to 
court the scorn of Raymond Casal. She felt a dire pre- 
sentiment that she was on the eve of new and tragic 
struggles, while the almost summer sun continued to smile 
its blessing on the gentle garden, the acacia to breathe out 
its supersensitive aroma, the talkative, delighted birds to 
show themselves the only fit inhabitants of this abode of 
peace. 

There was a light footstep on the gravel pathway, but 
Juliette heard it not. It was Gabrielle de Candolle. Her 
look was clouded by some singular emotion. Beyond 
doubt, she was the bearer of some fresh bad news. She 
seemed to draw herself within herself as she began to 
speak. She called her friend twice by name, and Juliette 
looked up. Madame de Tilliere was not for an instant 
mistaken in the expression of that well-known face. 

“Oh, what is wrong?’’ Juliette demanded as soon as 
they were in the little salon. Gabrielle had affectionately 
drawn her in out of the sunshine. 

“ The matter is,’’ said her visitor, in a tone almost stifled 
with emotion, “ that there is something so very wrong 


Before the Duel. 


203 


going on, I hardly know how to break it to you. Take 
my hand ; see how I tremble. Are you strong enough to 
listen?” 

“ Oh, speak, speak ! ” exclaimed unhappy Juliette. 

“ It is I who am almost out of my wits. I am here 
to calm you, my sweet one. Sit down ; how pale you 
are ! . . . Judge for yourself whether I have not done 
right to come to you at once. We were at nine o’clock 
this morning, Louis and I, drinking our coffee, when a 
letter was brought in. ‘ It is from Monsieur Casal,’ said 
the footman ; ‘ the messenger awaits an answer.’ ‘ From 
Casal?’ said Louis. ‘What can he have to say to me — a 
man that never writes?’ He opened the envelope and 
began to read. I observed him closely. I saw he was 
astounded. He answered : ‘Tell Monsieur Casal I will 
be at his house in half an hour.’ When we were alone, I 
asked him ‘ What is the matter ? ’ as you did just now. 
‘Nothing,’ said Louis, ‘that would be of interest to you. 
A presentation at the club.’ He had the look on his 
face I know so well, that is always there when he is 
lying. I have suffered too much from him not to know 
it. I was on the point of writing you this morning to 
tell you. But it seemed such a silly thing. . . . When 
we met again at dejeuner, I saw at once that Louis still 
was much preoccupied. All at once he asked : ‘ Do you 
know does Henry de Poyanne often visit Madame de 
Tilliere ? ’ ‘ Yes,’ said I ; ‘ why do you ask ? ’ ‘ Nothing ; 
I only wished to know,’ and he was once more silent, I 
have often told you he can keep nothing secret. ‘He 
leaks,’ as sister says. I let him sit still, certain that before 
breakfast was over he would drop some fresh phrase that 
would put me on to the secret. For there surely was a 


204 


Was It Love t 


secret, and it hinged upon that letter. The plan did not 
fail. ‘ And Casal,’ he asked, awkwardly, ‘ does he often 
go to see Madame de Tilli^re since they dined together 
here in company ?’ ‘ I do not know,’ I answered. ‘ But 

tell me why you are so eager to-day to be told who comes 
and goes in Juliette’s society ?’ ‘I ? — the idea ! ’ he said, 
and as he spoke the man came in and asked ‘ if monsieur 
could receive Lord Herbert Bohun ? ’ — that Englishman, 
the alter ego of Casal, who for years has never so much 
as left his card at our door. ... I left him and Louis 
closeted together in discussion, and took a cab, and here 
I am.” 

“ It is very strange,” cried Juliette — “ exceedingly ! If 
it should be about a duel ! If your husband and the Eng- 
lishman are Raymond’s seconds against Henry. Oh ! it 
is as clear as the day. They are going to fight. Do you 
not think so, Gabrielle ? Oh, answer me ! ” 

“ Well, yes,” said the Countess ; “ I thought it may be 
so. But do not excite yourself, I implore you. ... We 
may be mistaken. ... It is so very unlikely. Just 
think : Casal and Henry do not move in the same sphere. 
They do not belong to the same clubs, unless it is the 
Jockey Club, where Henry hardly ever goes ; and we can- 
not think of them quarrelling there, or in any public place. 
There must have been an exchange of letters, if it is so. 
... It is hard to think it. . . . There is something 
going on, I think ; I feel it. But what ? We must find 
out. Through whom, I want to know ? Louis has many 
faults ; he is very imprudent, maladroit often, but if he has 
given his word to be silent, he will keep it. . . . I wish 
that you would see Poyanne. That is the reason why I 
came to you.” 


Before the Duel. 


205 


“I thank you,” said Juliette, tenderly kissing her. 
“ My good angel ! A duel between those two^ ! I should 
not survive it. We must find out. . . . Henry is due 
here at two o’clock. . . . He has not written to put off 
the appointment. Heavens ! my head is burning. But 
you are in the right ; I must keep up.” 

Spite of this resolution, and although this sudden dan- 
ger had given her an air of outward calm, never in her 
life, since the day she had read the war telegram giving 
an account of the first battle her husband had fought in, 
had Juliette experienced such distracting and devouring 
anxiety as she did now. The few minutes that passed 
between Gabrielle’s departure and the Count’s arrival 
appeared so many ages. She regretted having allowed 
her friend to go, although Gabrielle had said, with great 
good sense : 

“ It will be better for Poyanne not to find me here. In 
these cases, the more people there are in the secret, the 
more a man’s self-love comes into play. Write me, as 
soon as you know anything. I shall be on tenter-hooks 
until I hear.” 

“Ten minutes past two ! ” thought Juliette, following 
the minute hand. “ If by a quarter past he is not here, 
it will mean that he is not coming. . . . How am I to 
find out ? . . . A ring at the bell. The door is open- 
ing — the drawing-room door. Ah ! it is he.” 

It was indeed Henry de Poyanne, who began by excus- 
ing himself for being late on account of press of business. 
In reality, he had just come away from his two seconds, 
his colleague De Sauve and General de Jardes. The 
meeting was fixed for the morrow ; the arms and condi- 
tions, fixed by himself— conditions that would give the 


2o6 


JVas It Love^ 


boldest pause — double-barrelled pistols at twenty paces, 
at the word of command. 

Henry de Poyanne did not conceal from himself that 
he was perhaps looking at his beloved one for the last 
time on earth. Nevertheless his face, which Juliette 
scanned with her heart in her eyes, did not betray the 
slightest sign of uneasiness. To show himself, on the eve 
of battle with a formidable foe, thus tranquil, did not 
oblige the Count to play a part. His quietude was not 
assumed. After the unexpected scene of the night 
before, Poyanne felt a strange calm come over him. 
Unable to imagine the real motive that had led Casal to 
fix this unmannerly quarrel upon him — the delirium of 
love’s curiosity — he only saw in it the mania of jealousy, 
the jealousy of a man accustomed to success with wo- 
men, resenting brutally the influence of the one for whom 
he thought himself expelled. What did this deep ill- 
temper betray, save that Raymond had no hope with Juli- 
ette? Then Juliette had never shown him any marks of 
tender interest ? Though the Count had never doubted 
Juliette’s fidelity, this irrefutable sign of it caused him to 
feel profoundly grateful. 

But this Casal ! He hated him so hotly, had hated him 
now for so many hours, furiously, that the prospect of 
having him at the mouth of his pistol so soon gave him, 
instinctively, a certain satisfaction. He ignored the fact 
that the chances of the fight were rather in favor of his 
adversary. At Gastinne’s shooting-gallery, that very 
morning, whither he had gone to prove he had not alto- 
gether forgotten how to handle firearms, he had seen 
nailed to the wall, amongst the trophy-targets of shots 
beyond emulation, a card riddled with seven consecutive 


Before the Duel. 


207 


bullets, and not a solid slip of pasteboard between the 
circumference of any of them. This card was marked, 
“ Monsieur Raymond Casal, 2'*® Decembre, 1875,” 

What of it ? Had he not faced death in ’70 ? And 
this sense of instant danger, after such a long series of 
chagrins and disappointments, was not an altogether un- 
pleasant sensation. Action, even tragic action, is a solace 
when we have fed too long upon our hearts. 

It was thus that Juliette saw in De Poyanne only a 
mask of sombre serenity, that might have deceived her 
had not human life, and Henry’s life, been at stake. To 
imagine nothing had gone wrong was not enough. She 
must find out for certain. There was one way by which 
she might ascertain whether the Count was to fight to- 
morrow. By asking him if he would pass the day with 
her she might make sure. 

After a few minutes of every-day conversation on the 
weather and each other’s health, she said to him, in a 
coquettish and wheedling way, of which her voice and 
face had almost lost the trick : 

“ I expect you now to show me how pleased you are 
with your dear friend. You are always reproaching me 
for not going out, for not taking the air. Well, mamma 
and I are going to-morrow to Fontainebleau, to see my 
Cousin de Nan9ay, who is staying there for a week or two. 
And whom do you think we have chosen for our cav- 
alier ? ” 

D’Avan9on ? ” said the Count, smiling, 

“ You are miles away,” said she, playfully. “ Our cava- 
lier is yourself. Do not say no. We will have no ex- 
cuses ! ” 

“ Unhappily, it is impossible,” answered De Poyanne. 


2o8 


Was It Love? 


“ I sit on a commission, at two o’clock, at the Palais Bour- 
bon.” 

“ You will throw over the commission,” said Juliette ; 

“ that is all about it. You know I do not ask you much. 
But this time I demand compliance. I have my reasons 
for it,” added she, mysteriously. 

“ You will allow,” said Henry, to sustain the tone of 
jest in which the conversation was pitched, but examining 
her face to see if she had any suspicions, ‘‘ that at least I 
have the right to know these reasons ? ” 

“And on my side, I cannot tell you,” answered Juli- 
ette, “ but I will. . . . And if it should be only a sick 
woman’s caprice, would you refuse to satisfy it? You 
know” — with a sad smile — “ you ought to make a fuss 
of me ; you may not have me always.” 

“ Alas ! no, indeed,” said De Poyanne, seriously, “ I 
may not. But, Juliette, be reasonable. If it is only your 
caprice, you would not have me sacrifice my duty and 
my conscience ? ” 

Henry had risen to escape the insupportable insistance 
of Juliette’s sapphire eyes, that seemed to search his soul. 
Was she so ill ? If so, she was but giving way to one of 
those despotic fancies that reveal the want of nervous 
poise. 

Or did she know all about the scene of the previous 
evening ; and if so, at whose telling ? 

Juliette gave him little time to reflect on these nice 
points, for she rose in her turn, and walking straight 
toward him, with wide-open eyes, cried reproachfully : 

“ Ah, Henry, you had better tell the truth. No, you 
are not at liberty to-morrow. I know it, and I know the 
reason. I will tell it to you, and let us see if you dare 


Before the Duel. 


209 


deny it. To-morrow you fight a duel — and I know with 
whom. Must I give his name ? ” 

Active as Poyanne’s doubts had been at the beginning 
of this interview, he was quite unable to conceal, as 
Juliette spoke, his astonishment. His very surprise was 
an avowal. And now a cruel idea was added to his for- 
mer fears, of such sinister force that he found further 
concealment impossible. If Juliette knew all, as she said 
she did, it was not from the mouths of either of his 
seconds ; of that he was positive. Consequently one of 
Casal’s seconds must have blabbed ; but this was hardly 
likely ! 

Or, Casal himself had told her. 

“ And why not ? He wanted to get even with her,” 
thought the Count ; “ perhaps even he threatened, before- 
hand, that he would fight this duel. ... He wrote a 
letter telling her all about it ? Miserable snob ! ” De 
Poyanne did not stop to reflect that this explanation was 
rather fantastic. He did not think that Juliette’s ruse 
perhaps only emanated from a vague suspicion. The de- 
testation he felt for his rival was so strong that the very 
thought of a new villany stung him into inappeasable fury, 
and he replied in tones of ice : 

“ Since you are so well posted, you know also the mo- 
tives of this meeting, and that it is inevitable ? ” 

“It is all too true, then?” cried Juliette, taking Henry 
in her arms. The sudden certainty that really these two 
men were about to fight to the death had struck such a 
panic to her soul she was no longer capable of argument ; 
and she continued, trembling in every limb, but holding 
her lover convulsively to her breast : 

“ Oh ! no ! no ! no ! this duel must not, shall not go 
14 


210 


JVas It Lovet 


on. You shall not fight him, Henry. . . . You and he, 
a duel ? It must not be, I say ! 

“ Oh ! if you love me, find some means to stay this 
monstrous strife ! You and he, one of you to kill the 
other ! It is impossible, I tell you. Swear to me it shall 
not be ! Do you hear ? I will not have it, it would kill 
me. Oh! you two — you two I" 

You two — you two I . . . The Count listened as she 
threw out these words, that revealed to him her fatal du- 
ality, a thing he had suspected many days, though she 
had successfully hidden it from him till the advent of one 
of those moments of supreme peril that unveil the hearts 
of strong and weak alike. She had seen these two, one 
and both so dear to her, in the same lightning flash of 
fear, locked in a wrestle which the grave alone could end. 
Her unhappy lover at this new evidence felt an upheaval 
of the moral jealousy from which he had already suffered 
so deeply. He disengaged himself from her tender em- 
brace, and almost rudely pushed asvay her imploring arms, 
crying : 

“ two! — we two! Look you, you hardly know 
whether it is for him or me you tremble ! You hardly 
know which of us two you love. . . . Or, rather, you do,'' 
continued he, with a concentrated bitterness that caused 
Juliette to clasp her hand to her heart as though he had 
struck her. De Poyanne’s accusation was indeed equiva- 
lent to a blow, for it was true. “You do know, and he 
knows too. Now I know why, seeing between you and 
him but one obstacle, the little remnant of affection you 
retained for me, he decided to sweep it away by sweeping 
me off the face of the earth. . . . But since he has told 
you, contrary to his word of honor, that we fight to-mor- 


Before the Duel. 


211 


row, has he told you also that he allowed himself to call me 
‘coward ' ? ‘ Coward,’ do you hear? And you ask me to 
swallow such an insult ! And, while I am speaking, shall 
I tell you all ? I will not allow such a mortal outrage to 
pass without taking this opportunity of staking my life 
against his, for I hate this man — I hate him, how 1 hate 
him ! ” 

“ Henry,” said Juliette, taking his hand with the timid- 
ity of a child imploring pardon of its mother, “ I implore 
you, believe me in this ! I swear to you, by all my past 
and yours, by all our future, that I have gathered nothing 
of all this save from Gabrielle and from yourself. . . . 
She was here just now. Her husband is one of the seconds 
in this horrible affair. He let slip a word or two that aroused 
her suspicions, and then mine, when she repeated them. 
Then, when I heard the avowal from your own lips, I saw 
blood — the spilling of blood for my sake ! And I cried 
aloud. . . . But 1 love you, I love you only. I am yours 
for life. ... Oh ! Henry, we shall be so happy. You 
were so good to me, so kind ! Understand this, admit- 
ting that this man loves me, if he has fixed a quarrel on 
you, it is because he knows I love you, that I shall love 
you forever ! ” 

“ Not the less has he insulted me ! ” interrupted the 
Count ; “ and I can do or say nothing that will wipe out 
that. I can no more draw back 7iow than if we were on 
the ground, and the command had been given to ‘ fire ! ’ 

. . . I believe you,” added he, more gently, answering 
Juliette’s pressure with a long and tender hand-clasp. He 
had once more experienced her sincerity of feeling toward 
him, at the same time that he suffered so deeply. He 
dared not tell her all his thoughts. “ If I was sure that 


212 


JVas It Love ? 


you do not- love him ! But no ; you love him, but you 
have no mind to do so ; you love him, yet you hardly 
dare to love ; while as for me, you wish to love me, but 
you cannot.” 

Henry de Poyanne began to be heart-sick of this eternal 
uncertainty ; and felt, too, the absolute necessity of pre- 
serving his presence of mind to set his affairs in order 
that very afternoon, possibly his last in the world. “ Yes,” 
he insisted, “ I believe you fully. And I feel that I have 
been unwise, unkind, to speak to you as I have done. 

. . . Now you know all. I cannot take back what I 
have said. But be of good courage, my own sweet friend, 
and speak no more upon this subject. . . . There is no 
paltering, you know that well, with affairs of honor. . . . 
And now I must really leave you. I came here to ask 
you to receive me at nine o’clock this evening. I will say 
Au revoir^ if it is God’s will. And we will talk to each 
other — you will have thought of much — without a word of 
all those things that hurt us both so much, so uselessly. 
We are not any too happy, we two, Juliette ! ” 

She let him go without another word. What could 
she do in face of the evidence of this social necessity 
that weighs on the world as implacably and oppressively 
as a physical necessity — this r-ecognized cataclysm of 
society that is as fatal as the falling factory or unex- 
pected earthquake ? Raymond had insulted Henry, 
grossly. The last was speaking by the card. So they 
must fight. There was no help for it ! But apparent 
necessity does not presuppose resignation, and the heart 
of this woman, thus doubly burdened with fear, revolted 
against the acceptance of the torture this duel repre- 
sented. 


Before the Duel. 


213 


Poyanne had been gone some time, and still Juliette 
sat in the same despondent attitude as when the door 
closed. Her mind was crowded with detestable images 
ot the combatants on the so-called field of honor ; she 
saw the grouped seconds, the awful doctor with his case 
of instruments, the still more awful glittering pistols — 
had not her lover mentioned pistols ? — and then one of 
those two stark upon the turf. . . . She saw Poyanne 
thus fallen : the eyes of this true friend of years, in which 
she could never bear to see the shadow of pain and sor- 
row, turned slowly, terribly, deathfully, toward her, and 
in them this supreme agony dumbly expressed, more tor- 
turous than dying Caesar’s whisper ; 

“ It is thou that hast slain me." 

She chased the nightmare with all her strength from 
her soul ; but another image interposed : 

Casal shot to death — Casal, whose presence had ever 
afflicted her with joy or terror, whose absence had ever 
caused her a surpassing melancholy. His noble, manly 
visage, whose beauty had so fatally attracted her, now 
corpse- white ; his eyes strained at her, not with tenderest 
reproach, but with the intolerable expression of utter scorn, 
the fear of which had haunted her for days and days- 
And — but how account for the possibility of this atrocious 
ambiguity of feeling ? — even at that moment of supernal 
agony, Juliette knew not which of those twain she would 
bewail with bitterer tears, if the duel ended in a death — 
a murder ! 

But no, it should not take place ! If she had to throw 
herself at the principals’ feet on the field, she would be 
there. . . . Insensate idea ! Neither the hour nor the 
place, nor anything connected with the duel was known 


214 


IVas It Love ? 


to her. In twenty-four hours, in less, the last act of the 
drama brought about by her culpable weakness would be 
over. She had been able to take the measure of her im- 
potence in the matter, when Poyanne had so haughtily 
spoken to her of the impossibility of interfering with the 
course of affairs of honor, and she had found no word 
of interruption. What to do now ? Oh, heaven ! what 
step to take ? . . . Address herself to the seconds ? , It 
was their bounden duty to hurry on the battle. But who 
were they? She knew the names of De Candolle and of 
Lord Herbert. What could she say to them ? In whose 
name supplicate the friends of the man she had deceived, 
deceived by act, if not by word of mouth ? For in their 
eyes, if they had received the merest outline of the case 
from Casal, she was a coquette, an infamous, perfidious 
jilt, who had allowed herself to be courted in her lover’s 
absence by a person to whom she proposed to show the 
door as soon as he returned. How explain to them her 
good faith, her involuntary concessions, but, above all, 
this abominable anomaly of a double heart which caused 
her to tremble equally for the safety of both ? And then 
the nightmare took possession once more. She saw a hor- 
rid scarlet blotch upon a cambric shirt, a spurt of red, red 
blood, and with the blood, whether Henry’s or Raymond's, 
her life flowed out in anguish. The sensation was so aw- 
ful as to make Juliette long for a painless death rather 
than her mortal eyes should see the hideous sight. 

The clock struck the hour. Mechanically Juliette 
lifted her head. The silver bell sounded unnaturally 
loud through the silence. Minute by minute, second by 
second, the precious time was escaping, escaping — the 


Before the Duel. 


215 


time to act, the time that might enable her to prevent 
the nightmare coming true. It had struck four — over 
an hour since De Poyanne had closed the door behind 
him. And she had done nothing as yet but think and 
think. All the time Gabrielle was waiting for her, ready 
to second her in the work of reconciliation. 

The idea that she had carelessly thrown away so 
many precious moments caused Juliette to rise abruptly. 
In a twinkling she rang for her maid, donned a street 
costume, and sent for a fiacre. Soon she was rolling 
toward the Rue Tilsitt as fast as the coachman would 
drive. Twenty projects flashed through her mind, in all 
of which the Countess had a part to play. A very simple 
accident frustrated one and all. Not seeing anything of 
her friend, and being almost beside herself with impa- 
tience, Madame de Candolle had driven away to the Rue 
Matignon. No doubt their respective carriages passed 
each other on the way, for the porter dwelt on the short 
time his mistress had been away. 

“If only,” thought Juliette, reseating herself in the 
carriage — “if only she has had the good sense to wait 
for me at home ! ” 

It would have been, no doubt, the Countess’s safest way. 
But in these emergencies it is always the obvious things 
that we do not dream of doing. Instead of saying to her- 
self, “Juliette is evidently gone to the Rue Tilsitt, and 
will come back here when she fails to find me,” Madame 
de Candolle, dveoured with anxiety, thought of nothing 
save to push on to the Rue Royale, resolute, if her hus- 
band was at the club, to call him out and find out some- 
thing from him. Whilst she was on this bootless errand, 
seeing the hour, and the habits of her husband, Juli- 


2i6 


IVas It Love ? 


ette arrived at her own house once more. She learned 
that her friend had been there, but had gone away with- 
out leaving any message. In face of this fresh misunder- 
standing, she was seized with the idea of returning to the 
Rue Tilsitt, where, naturally, she did not find the one she 
was in search of. Then, in the disturbed frame of mind 
these counter-journeys had induced, a new and different 
idea began to grow and grow, until it seemed impossible 
to refuse this unique chance of thances to prevent the 
duel. 

The battle was between Poyanne and Casal. What 
was the cause of it ? An insult by Casal — the word 
“ Coward! ” hurled at his enemy. ... If she could get 
him to retract it, if he would but apologize for the insult, 
the duel would become impossible. Could any one ob- 
tain this grace from him ? Who but herself 1 Why not ? 
If she went to him now, immediately, showed him her 
grief, her agony, implored him to let the fight go by de- 
fault, would he not yield ? What honor prevented De 
Poyanne from doing, he could perform — and would, if he 
loved her. And if he had not loved her, he would never 
have gone to such extremities. Yes, here was safety — 
only here. Why had she not thought of it long ago ? 

Forty minutes more lost already. Her carriage was 
half way between the two houses when she arrived at this 
revolutionary conclusion. But little time to act — at 
seven, dinner with her mother ; at nine she was to meet 
Henry again. As if in a dream, she beat her knuckles 
on the pane, and called out Raymond Casal’s private ad- 
dress. As if in a dream, she descended at the door of 
the old family mansion in the Rue Lisbonne, rang, asked 
for Monsieur Casal, and was admitted. The enormity of 


Before ihe Duel. 


217 


her action only appeared to her when she was seated in 
the grand salon awaiting Raymond’s approach. The 
clock struck five. ^ 

“ Mon Dieu ! ” she cried aloud, “ what have I done ? ” 
Already too late to withdraw. Raymond entered. He 
had been in the library, occupied, as was no doubt Poy- 
anne, in settling his worldly affairs, as men do who are to 
fight for their lives on the morrow, when the valet an- 
nounced the visit of a lady, name refused. He imagined 
that perhaps some indiscretion of De Candolle had re- 
vealed all to the Countess, and that Gabrielle had called 
to try and get him to allow her husband to arrange 
the affair. When he recognized Juliette, his astonish- 
ment was so profound that he remained for many seconds 
motionless on the threshold. To see her now, so pale, so 
shaken with an emotion she could not conceal, he guessed 
at a glance that she knew everything. Through whom, if 
not through De Poyanne ? By instinct he reasoned in 
the same way as his adversary had already done. In face 
of this new proof of an understanding between these two, 
he, also, felt an access of jealous fury. But he brought 
to bear on J uliette the violence of a man whose mind has 
been long over-fraught with dark suspicion, and whose 
whole thought is to bruise and break the spirit of the 
woman who has been the cause. 

“ You here, madame ? Ah ! I can guess the reason. 
You wish to ask of me your lover’s life ? ” 

“ No,” replied Juliette, in a broken voice. Casal’s 
speech had wounded her to the quick, but since this 
mad adventure was afoot, at least she would try so to act 
that her effort might not be vain. “ No ! it is not his life 
I come to ask of you ; it is my ow7i. I come to ask of 


2i8 


IVas It Love^ 


you not to add to the distress I have been suffering for 
weeks, the agony of seeing two brave men risk death 
through my ill-doing. . . . You, ojily, can undo that 
which you have accomplished ; and that is why I wished 
to see you, to talk to you, to implore you, if needs be, to 
spare me, me — I, that can bear no more ; 'I, who will not 
survive if anything should happen.” 

Juliette spoke without measuring her words. She only 
saw before her the necessity of touching Casal’s feelings 
if the duel was to be stopped. She did not reflect that 
her words, in this man’s eyes, were equivalent to the most 
precise avowal. 

“It was not his life, ‘her lover’s life,’” she came to 
ask ! . , . 

The phrase burnt into Casal’s haughty spirit like a red- 
hot branding-iron. He took two steps toward her, and 
then stood with folded arms, a vision of terror. 

“ So ! You avow he is your lover. And I would not 
believe it, fool that I surely was. Have you duped me yet 
sufficiently to please your dainty taste ? Have I played 
the puling school-boy long enough to tickle your sense of 
the ridiculous ? Have you laughed your soulful at the 
namby-pamby fellow who came to you to beg the love 
that you were lavishing upon another all the while ? 
While as for me, I loved you as I never loved before. So 
deferential was I that I did not even dare to speak my 
mind ! . . . I must admit you know your business very 
well ; the niceties of coquetry, too, become your style. 
But you have yet to learn that it is dangerous to tamper 
with a man of spirit. I will kill this lover of yours for 
you, madame ; I will kill him for you as sure as you have 
lied to me for two whole months, day by day, hour by 


^Before the Duel. 


219 


hour. ... I comprehend it has entertained you in your 
trade of pretty creature to have been able to boast : ‘ The 
poor young man is most unhappy, truly ; but what has he 
to complain of ? I never conceded anything to him ; I 
made no promises. He loved me ; is that my fault ? ’ 
. . . Yes, it is your fault, madame ; and since I can 
only reach you through this De Poyanne of yours, who 
had told you, against his word of honor, the secret of this 
meeting, no doubt to save his life, it is through him that 
I will strike you ! Counsel him not to miss the appoint- 
ment. As for me, I shall be there. And now, adieu for- 
ever, madame. There is no need of words between us 
any more.” 

An infinitely cruel speech, in terrible contrast with 
every individual word this man had spoken to Juliette 
de Tilli^re since the day, so long ago, when they had sat 
side by side at the De Candolles’, under the gleaming wax 
lights, in the perfume of the roses and violets, with the 
white lilac and mauve-purple orchids in front of them, 
afraid to look each other in the eyes for fear of betraying 
that not quite impossibility, even in the nineteenth cent- 
ury, Love at First Sight ! . . . 

An infinitely cruel speech ! 

For the first time Juliette used the Christian name of 
the man who thus attacked her, and made answer, in the 
plenitude of her woe : 

“No, Raymond ; I cannot bear that you should speak 
to me, condemn me thus. Ah ! how is it no voice has 
pleaded for me in your heart ? How is it you do not do 
me the justice of thinking that perhaps you never have 
known alU You who know what life is, how is it you 
never thought of admitting, when you began to suspect 


220 


Was It Lovel 


me : ‘ This woman is the victim of a fatality I am ignorant 
of ; but she is not a flirt. She has been, is sincere with 
me. I have interested her, she has loved me.’ . . . 

“ Yes, Raymond, I have loved you, and I love you yet. 
If that had not been so, do you think that the thought of 
this encounter between you two w'ould have overthrown 
me so as to have brought me here — I, Juliette de Tilli^re ? 

. . . Yes, it is true when you entered into my life I was 
not free. I ought not to have received you as I did. 
... I thought myself strong ; I was weak. I saw not 
whither I was going. All worked so rapidly, so fatally. 

. . . But, on the other side, did I know how much I was 
loved ? I learnt everything so suddenly — all that I felt 
for you, and all the suffering I caused a noble heart. 
Ah ! you will never understand, you, a man, that a true 
woman cannot cross to happiness with one man over the 
heart’s grave of another. But it is all too true. I could 
not do it. When I felt the agony of one near me who 
had not changed, the reflex of his pain, I weakened ; I 
could only think of healing so much suffering, or of pre- 
venting it. . . . I do not lie to you. Oh ! do not doubt 
the truth. I am showing you the all in all of my heart’s 
misery. To-day these things are so. Look at me ; see 
what this effort, this tearing of my soul in twain to sepa- 
rate from you, is costing me. Think of my martyrdom, 
and answer, have I no right to say. Add not another 
pang ! Oh ! leave me not to think that I am your assas- 
sin— or his! No one suffers as I suffer. It is 
too hard. It is, indeed, too hard ! ” 

How beautiful was Juliette whilst thus recounting the 
strange inner drama of which, as she said, she was the 


Before the Duel. 


221 


chief, the fated victim, with the weird beauty of a woman 
who trails her pride in the dust for love ! Who could be 
adamant to this appeal ? Her only fault had been to feel 
too deeply, and to love too tenderly — if to do so is wrong. 
In spite of himself, Casal abandoned himself to the utter 
charm of this unique confession. How could he escape 
the arch-mesmeric power of such sincerity ? His jealousy 
and passion fled at sight of that which she had so justly 
called the all in all of her heart’s misery. He now saw 
her as she really was, illogical, yet so noble, a prey to in- 
congruous affections, and so bitterly punished. How ? 
By being able neither to renounce one nor accept the 
other ! Shame seized him at thought of his recent savage 
cruelty. 

He, too, could not bear to see such suffering, and not 
endeavor to console it. It was with a faltering voice and 
with tears in his eyes that he spoke, and oh ! the change 
of tone was bliss itself to Juliette : 

“ Why did you not speak to me thus long ago ? When 
I came to see you, after what Gabrielle told me, had you 
but told me then ! I should have understood, I could 
have pardoned all. But now — oh ! it is all too late ! ” . . . 

And then, after a long pause : 

“ You ask that I should settle this affair. Alas ! noth- 
ing any longer depends on me. Make an apology upon 
the ground ? Not that, not that : it is impossible.” 

“ ‘ Impossible ! ’ ” cried Juliette, wringing her hands. 
“And you say you love me ! It is your pride that 
speaks, Raymond, and not your heart. ... I implore 
you, if ever I have been sweet and lovable in your eyes, 
if you think now anew of me, if you have really forgiven 
me, if you love me, listen to me, and do what I ask ! ” 


222 


Was It Love 7 


She continued pressing her advantage, besieging him with 
her prayers, her looks, her tears, her very self, breath- 
ing her will over him through that suggestion of extrem- 
ity of wishfulness before which resistance the most freez- 
ing quails and yields, till he said in the tone of a man 
who throws away his pride for good : 

“ You wish it ; well ! I can do something still — it is 
useless to ask me to do more — I can write De Poyanne a 
letter, expressing my regrets that I spoke as I did to a 
man of his acknowledged courage. ... I promise I will 
word this letter in such form that it will be admissible for 
him to rest contented. But if not, if he exacts satisfac- 
tion still by force of arms — even after that — I owe it to 
him, and he shall have it. ” 

“And this letter,” said Juliette, panting, “when will 
you write ? Immediately ? ” 

“ It shall be so, immediately,” said Casal. “ You have 
my word.” 

“ Oh ! ” exclaimed Juliette, “how I thank you, how I 
thank you ! How much you love me ! ” 

It was her business, next, to decide Poyanne, and once 
the letter was written, she did not, could not doubt that 
she would fail to overcome his rancor. By her presence 
and speech alone she had vanquished the jealousy, the 
pride, the passion of a man so bitter, of a man who, at 
the first onset, had been so utterly devoid of mercy. In 
the overflow of gratitude that swept her off her feet, in 
the reaction from the exertion of will-power that had pro- 
cured her this answer to her prayers, tears came into Juli- 
ette’s eyes, her limbs began to fail her. She yet held 
Casal’s hands, as she had taken them when pouring out her 
heartfelt thanks. He upheld her on his arm, and she did 


Before the Duel, 


223 


not repulse him. Once more he beheld that pale face on 
his shoulder, now with a little smile shining through her 
melancholy. The tortured soul was at rest for a mo- 
ment, the palpitating heart at peace. Half in reverence, 
all in love, Casal bent his head, and for the first and the 
last time on earth the lips of those two, who loved each 
other with a passion that was akin to the affection of the 
angels, met, and Juliette for the first and for the last 
time in all her life was happy, till, with a start — the clock 
had scarce ticked thrice — she bethought her where she 
was, with whom — and fled. 




XI. 


THE LAST OF THE LABYRINTH. 

“ God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. 

. . . Get thee to a nunnery — go ! ” — Hamlet. 

Disregardful of ceremony, Juliette quitted Raymond 
without further adieu, and directed the coachman to drive 
to the corner of the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore ; for 
she felt unable to proceed directly home, and it wanted 
yet an hour to dinner-time. Her mind was still a whirl- 
pool of emotion. She did not for a moment doubt that 
the letter of apology would be sent to De Poyanne ; but 
when he received it, what would he think of the conduct 
of Casal, and how account for such an unexpected falling 
off, unless knowing, as he did, her influence over Ray- 
mond, he at once suspected Juliette of having been the 
instrument of mediation ? She had not foreseen all this ; 
her sole anxiety had been to prevent the duel. 

But even if it was prevented, what next, and next ? 
She had just given Casal a final proof that he had her 
heart entirely in his keeping, yet her spirit none the less 
remained Henry’s. The kiss that she had shared with 
Raymond, then, was but an empty compact, the last lock 
on the mausoleum of their love ? It was intended to 
mean everything ; but, being analyzed, only seemed the 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


225 


seal of their unhappiness. It was something more than a 
gage, something less than a pledge. Confronted, it formed 
but another proof to the tortured Juliette that she was not 
as other women in society appeared to be, the mistress of 
their inclinations. A very mist of misery blotted the future 
from her outlook. Yes ; even if this duel was not fought, 
the consequences of her previous actions would remain. 
Her visit to Casal might prove instrumental in saving the 
lives of either of these two men, but what would it amount 
to in the end t The fatal tangle of her feelings remained 
to be untwisted. Nay, the immediate consequences 
pointed to fresh complications ; the tangle had become 
even more hopelessly knotted. These men would bear a 
still sterner animosity against each other now that they 
had been separated by the frail strength of a woman ; 
and as for herself, she was more powerless than before to 
decide between their warring claims to the supremacy in 
her affections. Traits of passion were about to come into 
play which her sympathetic nature could only view with 
horror. It was no longer possible to delude herself about 
the nature of her love for Raymond, and after the new 
sign of it that she had given, he would assuredly resume the 
quest with renewed ardor ; he would seek fresh opportuni- 
ties of meeting her, would besiege her with letters, would 
make her life a burden to herself, her society a barren 
boredom to her friends. For Juliette had no more thought 
of yielding to Casal’s importunity now than before the 
threat of battle. Yet it was clear that she could not con- 
ceal long from De Poyanne the fact that she had prompted 
the letter of apology. And she could guess the fatal train 
of consequences ; whichever way she looked, nothing but 
deep discomfort seemed her portion. 

15 


226 


fVas It Love I 


Her carriage stopped at the perfumery store named ; 
the very coachman’s genial grin seemed to mock her. 
The bright slant sun of evening dazzled her eyes, as her 
own thoughts dazzled her soul. ... No ; after all, she 
would not get out ; she did not feel strong enough to play 
at making purchases. Juliette directed the man to drive 
up the Champs Elys^es, and threw herself back in de- 
spair on the musty cushions of the hired vehicle. 

Had ever a more miserable mortal than herself been 
driven in that carriage ? The aimlessness of the pres- 
ent journeying was but symbolic of her life. Wretched 
women ere now had been known to fling their wrongs and 
horrors at nightfall into the silent Seine. It would be 
dark enough in half an hour. Involuntarily Juliette be- 
gan to long for a quick and painless end to life. In im- 
agination she saw the chrys^^ase stream, mirroring the 
lamp-glimmer, flowing on and on to Notre Dame, to the 
great sea, peaceful, profound. Death-darkness seemed 
an enviable eventide. This little life — it could but have 
been granted her, she thought, to tantalize ! Good Cath- 
olic though she was, the sweet offices of the church did 
not now appear to hold out the faintest hope of consola- 
tion. For the first time in her existence she, the ener- 
getic lady of the Rue Matignon, the centre of a cultured 
and admiring circle, felt as the fainting tatterdemalion of 
the streets may be supposed to feel in his most dismal 
hour, or the yet more lonely and despairing one of the 
sad sisterhood of social lepers. 

The weary widow in fancy beheld herself carried to 
the Rue Matignon, a pitiful thing instead of a breathing 
woman. Not for her own sake, but for her mother’s, she 
recoiled. The vision of such a home-coming rendered 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


227 


Madame de Nan9ay so luridly present that Juliette cried 
aloud : 

“ Dear, dear mamma, she loves me so ! I must have 
courage ! ” 

She made up her mind, now, to go back very bravely. 
It was late, but she could say she had been taken ill. 
Her lassitude of eye and gesture would substantiate this 
fresh excuse. Excuses ! She was sick of lying. 

Her mother was exceedingly alarmed at her appearance, 

“ I almost fainted in a shop, mamma. I would not let 
them tell you, so as not to frighten you. You have suf- 
fered enough ! ” 

“ You will see a doctor at once,” exclaimed Madame 
de Nan9ay. “ Poor child, how your face is altered, and 
even in your need you spared me ! How good you are ! ” 

She embraced her daughter tenderly, little knowing 
that her very kindness made Juliette feel but more dis- 
comfited. 

“ I am better now,” she said. “ Oh ! let me sleep. It 
will be time to see a doctor in the morning.” 

“ Lie down, my angel,” said Madame de Nan9ay, as 
though to a child. 

“ But Gabrielle is coming.” 

“ I wiU receive her, and will tell her all.” 

“And Monsieur de Poyanne.” 

“ You shall not be disturbed.” • 

“ My love to him, mamma ; and say he is to come for 
us, without fail, to-morrow morning, to go to Fontaine- 
bleau.” 

“ Sleep, sleep, my only babe ! ” Juliette had half 
walked, half been carried to the pretty bedroom furnished 
with her girlhood’s belongings, and now lay on the nar- 


228 


H as It Love t 


row rosewood couch with its ivory rails almost as white 
as ivory herself. Madame de Nangay gently fanned her, 
singing the plaintive notes of a half-forgotten cradle song, 
till Juliette, exhausted by many dread nights of insomnia, 
sank into the undisturbed slumber of a tired child. 

Toward daylight Juliette dreamt that she was walking 
down a great, cool, dim cathedral aisle, in bridal array, to 
meet her future husband. She did not know who the 
groom was, but at the altar, looking up, beheld Raymond 
Casal, clothed in funeral black, ready for the ceremony. 
The service was conducted according to the rites of the 
English Church, which she had often visited from curi- 
osity. When the question was propounded about “ any 
just cause or impediment,” there was a stir in the vast 
audience that had gathered, and out of the throng walked 
a tall man, clad in the garb of a captain of the Imperial 
Guard, a long sabre with a gilt scabbard clanking on the 
tessellated pavement. He came forward, without a word 
on his lips, and stood at the altar, at the right hand of 
Raymond Casal. It was her husband, the Count Gus- 
tave de Tilli^re, slain in the year ’70. 

Juliette woke with a dreadful scream that roused the 
house. The servants came rushing in — last of all, Ma- 
dame de Nangay, to whom her daughter merely related 
the fact that she had had a fearful nightmare. Her 
mother would not leave her any more, but sat and held 
her hand till broad daylight. The glad June morning 
sunshine revealed Juliette looking years older than the 
evening, not yet three months back, she had waited so 
lovingly on Madame de Nangay before the hunting din- 
ner in the Rue de Tilsitt. 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


229 


As soon as Juliette had managed to swallow a cup of 
coffee and a few sweet biscuits they brought her in her 
letters. Yes, Gabrielle had called, and left no further 
message than that she would be with her in the forenoon. 

Henry de Poyanne ? No ; he had not come again, or 
sent his valet either. Madame de Nan^ay opined that he 
had no doubt been detained by political engagements. 

Juliette clutched an unopened envelope with the 
monogram =^. = in gold stamped on it. She knew 
it must be from Raymond Casal. Turning her head 
away, she found courage, in the midst of her alarms, to 
break the seal. 

The non-arrival of De Poyanne could only signify that 
he had backed out of his intention of spending the even- 
ing with Juliette. If that was the case, the letter of 
apology had proved unavailing, and by this time the 
dreadful duel had been fought, and one or other of them 
possibly even now was groaning out his precious life-blood 
on the sward. 

As Juliette unfolded Casal’s note, the image of her 
dead husband seemed, in her agony, to be looking over 
her shoulder. The letter ran as follows : 

“Paris, Friday Night. 

“ I kept my word, my charming friend, and wrote to M. de P. . . . 
This letter, which has cost me so much, will be but another token to 
you how anxiously I long to please you. 

“ If, as I hope, things are arranged, I shall call upon you at two 
o’clock in order to tell you all about it by word of mouth. 

“ I am, your 

“ Raymond.” 


A copy of the letter to the Count was appended : 


230 


Was It Love 1 


“ Monsieur : On the eve of a meeting similar to the one appointed 
for to-morrow, the step I now hazard would run the risk of being 
interpreted very strangely had I not already, as you yourself have, 
proved my courage to the world, and were I not to add tliat you are 
absolutely at liberty to take no notice of this letter, if so it pleases you 
to do. In that case, let all remain as though I had not written it. 
But, in any case, I shall have done a duty to my conscience. 

“ Let me now say that men of your character and talent are too few 
and far between in our country, and their lives too precious, for it to 
be the slightest stain upon my honor to tell you that I regret my ill- 
considered speeches of last night. I repeat, monsieur, that in writ- 
ing thus to you I am acting from a conscientious scruple ; thus, if 
you judge this satisfaction insufficient, I am entirely at your dis- 
posal, as has been arranged. Which way soever your decision runs, 
accept in this a proof of my particular esteem. 

“ Raymond Casal.” 


“ But Henry could not have turned a deaf ear to ex- 
cuses thus presented ! ” thought Juliette, with renewed 
hope that the duel had been frustrated, reading once 
more the two letters side by side on the same sheet of 
paper. The coincidence seemed a little indelicate. Juli- 
ette could have wished that Raymond’s note to her had not 
been quite so closely linked with these souvenirs of his 
rival. It was only a coincidence, but women are alive to 
such things. And she recognized a hardly concealed 
sense of self-satisfaction in the letter to herself. The 
idea was wormwood to her gentle spirit. It was she 
herself who had been unable to act up to her delib- 
erate policy ; could she then blame Casal for seeking 
to reestablish himself not only on the former friendly 
footing, but for endeavoring to push his courtship to an 
issue ? Where was a fresh excuse to come from, now that, 
alas ! her lies had been admitted by her own confession ? 


The Last of the Labyrmth. 


231 


Henceforward, if he lived — what horror in the thought ! — 
he would only smile when he heard any new excuse from 
her lips. What shame and sorrow to have forfeited that 
natural endowment of man or woman, the simple right to 
be believed ! . . . 

“ What matter all my sufferings if they are saved ? ” 

This hope grew rather than failed as the sun rose higher. 
It was impossible for her to send a messenger to De Poy- 
anne’s apartments under any pretext before ten o’clock. 
She wished to make sure that the Count had not gone 
out. As soon as she learned that, on the contrary, he 
had quitted his rooms very early in the morning, without 
leaving any word as to when he would return, her hopes 
fell to the ground like autumn leaves before a hurricane. 
Vainly she repeated : 

“ I am frightening myself for nothing. In any case he 
would be bound to see his seconds.” But these excuses 
served to while away the time. Her mother left her now, 
to attend to some domestic matter. What should she do 
next ? Send to the Rue Lisbonne .? She thought a long 
while of so doing, and mentally sketched the beginnings 
of half a dozen letters. Madame de Tilliere was making 
ready to write to Gabrielle, when the door opened and 
the Countess entered. The excited expression of her eyes 
left no further room for doubt in Juliette’s mind. 

“ The duel has been fought ? ” she cried. 

“ At last I find you,” said Gabrielle, not answering the 
question directly, “ and, I suppose, you passed your after- 
noon trying to convince Poyanne. When I heard of the 
state of mind you were in, I guessed that you had 
failed. 

“ Yes ; they have doubtless fought. I am quite sure of 


232 


IVas It Love? 


it. Last night I saw on the table the case of duelling- 
pistols they brought secretly into the house ; and this 
morning, when Louis went out, I looked, and the case was 
no longer there. ... I heard from the concierge that he 
gave Casal’s address to the coachman. ... I awaited 
his rearrival, hoping to learn the result, one way or the 
other, the livelong morning. As he was not home by 
eleven, I could bear the suspense no longer, and so came 
on to you.” 

“ But you — do you know nothing ? Speak, what is the 
news ? ” 

“I know now that Raymond insulted Henry,” said 
Madame de Tilli&re ; “that was the cause of the quarrel.” 

“ My God ! to think that at this instant one of them is 
perhaps lying dead, and I the cause of it ! 

“ Let us go, Gabrielle ; come with me. Let us go. 
There may yet be time. Your gatekeeper has told you 
where your husband went. Let us now hasten, and get 
similar information at Casal’s.” 

“ You talk like a child ! ” responded Gabrielle. “ Even 
if we got at their destination and went thither, we should 
be too late. I will not be a party to such a silly step, and 
one that would harm your reputation. We owe so?nething 
to our names. Hold up your head a little higher, my 
sweet one ! ” 

“ As if ray name and pride were in question ! ” cried 
Juliette. “The question is, I will not sit and see them 
murder each other. I will not ! ” 

“ Be quiet, love,” said the Countess ; “ some one is 
knocking at the door.” 

The footman entered. 

His simple phrase had a meaning for these two v/omen 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


that held them spell-bound with the same thought of 
terror : 

“M. le Comte de Poyanne waits, and wishes to know 
if madame is able to receive him ?” 

“Tell him to come in,” said Juliette, hardly able to 
speak. “Go into my bedroom, Gabrielle ! I shall want 
you presently, perhaps. I feel that I shall faint. Go, go, 
my own ! ” 

Hardly, in fact, could poor Juliette stand. 

If there had been a duel, Henry, at any rate, was safe 
and sound. 

But Raymond ? 

And there had been a duel. 

She saw it in the first eyeblink of De Poyanne. He was 
very pale, and dressed in a black frock coat. She flew to 
him, unmindful of what he would think of her behavior. 

“ WellV' cried she, in a voice but little louder than a 
whisper. 

“ Well ? ” responded the Count, almost imitating her. 
“ We fought. ... I am here. But,” added he, gravely, 
“ my hand, unfortunately. . . .” And he paused, mysteri- 
ously holding out his right hand. 

“He is wounded?” demanded Juliette, agonizingly. 
“He is ” 

She dared not finish the sentence. The Count had 
opened his lips as though to answer “ Yes I ” to the ques- 
tion she had failed to formulate. Juliette gave a little 
scream. Her lips, this time, managed to frame the fatal 
words : 

“ Dead — he is dead ! ” 

She fell into a chair as though annihilated. She drooped 
her head between her palms, and such convulsive sobs 


234 


IVas It Lovet 


rent her breast that it seemed her frail spirit must soon 
pass away with the mortal terror of such throes. 

De Poyanne drew himself to his full height, and watched 
her. An expression of profound sorrow ruled his noble 
countenance. He approached her, and, touching her 
shoulder with his hand, said quietly : 

“ Deny that you love him now I” 

The Count spoke in that frozen tone of voice that was 
always so terrible to Juliette, but it is very doubtful if she 
even heard him. 

“Weep not, Juliette,” said De Poyanne, rousing her 
from her tragic v/oe. “ Weep no longer. And pardon me 
for having had to put you through this ordeal in order to 
be quite sure of your true sentiments — quite sure ! 

“ No ; he is not dead. He is wounded, but not danger- 
ously, with a ball in the arm, which the surgeon has doubt- 
less extracted long ere this. 

“ He will live. 

“ But what matters it, now, to me, whether this man lives 
or whether he dies ? Alive or dead, you love him ; and 
you love me no longer. 

“ I wished to know, and whether he was so deeply dear 
to you or not. 

“ I lied to you, Juliette, for the first time, and the last 
time, in our lives. 

“ And now I am rewarded. Ah ! harshly, harshly 
since I see you thus bewail him. 

“ Yes, it is hard for me to bear, but not so bitter as the 
doubt of these last days. 

“ Do not answer me. I am not your accuser. I have 
nothing with which to reproach you. You yourself, I 
think, hardly knew how much you loved him. 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


235 


“ But now you know. And I know, too *' 

A silence fell on these two lovers. 

The first feeling of despair with which Juliette had 
greeted the news of Casal’s death changed into a sort 
of stupor as De Poyanne spoke. Reassured as to the 
results of the duel she had so dreaded, Henry had now, 
at last, bound her, and, so to speak, nailed her restless 
limbs to the cold, inexorable cross of truth. For the first 
time for months the situation between them was defined 
and circumscribed, and Juliette convicted of this love for 
Casal that she had so combated. Even if she had not 
just given this proof of it by being so overcome by the 
supposed death, she had no longer the strength to strug- 
gle or deny the simple facts. This horror of her double 
hearthad had its day, and must give place to something 
else, no matter what. 

Juliette waited ; she was sitting with her hands crossed 
on her knees, her eyes cast down, as some guilty one who 
is prepared to hearken to a righteous sentence. 

At last she resumed the sad conversation in the voice 
of a suppliant : 

“ It is true. I have struggled for many days against a 
trouble that I cannot overcome. It is true. You have 
the right to condemn me, because I did everything in 
my power to conceal this struggle from your eyes. But 
it is also true ” — and her voice took on a firmer tone 
— “ it is also true that never, never ^ do you hear ? have 
you ceased to be dear to me, so dear that I could 
never bear to see you suffer for an instant without 
feeling an irresistible desire to comfort you. Never 
have I contemplated my own happiness at the cost of. 
yours. Nor was it ever anything but true when I told 


236 


IVas It Love? 


you I needed your love as one needs air. . . . Call it 
by what name you will, this feeling of affection for you, 
which made it impossible for me to accept my freedom 
when you offered it ; but never forget that it was real, 
sincere, and that I obeyed it without other thought. Re- 
alize this, at least, Henry. Do not imagine that I have 
been playing with you ; for it is not, and it never has 
been so.” 

“No,” said the Count, interrupting her. “You have 
been afraid to see me suffer. Let us look the situation 
in the face. ... I know it all, I comprehend it all, and 
still I live. I am not young enough to be unable to re- 
nounce happiness. But, at my age, one is hungry and 
thirsty for the truth, and, once more, it is the truth, 
Juliette, that you no longer love me, that you love an- 
other. If I hankered for a decisive and irrefutable proof 
of this, it was to have the right to tell you, without re- 
proach or jealousy: *You are free. Make what use of 
your liberty best pleases you.’ 

“ Everything, anything is preferable to the moral imbe- 
cility that so long prevented you from seeing your heart 
in the mirror of fact ; anything is better than this pity that 
sits so ill upon you, than these oscillations between oppo- 
site emotions that have led you, whither ? — to offer me, 
whom you know, for whose love you have so much regard, 
a mortal insult ! ” 

“ ‘ A mortal insult ! ’ ” repeated Juliette. What did he 
mean by that ? Casal again ? “ Explain yourself ? ” 

“ Read this letter,” answered De Poyanne, handing her 
the duplicate in Raymond’s writing, of the letter she had 
read that very morning. “And answer me, answer me 
truly. I can bear everything, and you owe it me to tell 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


237 


me all. ‘ Yes ’ or ‘ no,’ was it you who instigated Casal to 
pen me these excuses ? For of himself, I know, he never 
would have written thus.” 

“ It was I,” said Juliette, with an effort. “ Oh ! pardon 
me, Henry. I was beside myself. You had repulsed me 
so harshly. I had only that one hope, that feeble hope, 
of preventing the duel.” 

“ And you failed to reflect that if I had accepted these 
excuses, this man would have thought that I was afraid 
to fight him, and that I had set you on to make over- 
tures ? ” 

“No, Henry,” cried Juliette ; “ I swear to you it never 
struck me for a moment. He knows you are so brave ; 
and then, he had only to look at me,” she added, pitifully, 
“ to see I was no longer in my wits. For, truly, I was 
crazy with despair.” 

“ Ah ? ” said the Count. “ You saw him yesterday ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Juliette, with a still greater effort. 

“ Here ? ” said De Poyanne, to whom this question 
was visibly difficult to utter. 

“No,” answered she, with the resolution of one who 
has had enough of hypocrisy. 

“ At his house ? ” 

“ At his house.” 

They looked at each other. The old expression of pain, 
now much intensified, passed over De Poyanne’s features, 
that had so often betrayed her into a pity that paralyzed 
her will, and made her what she was. 

“ Do not misjudge me ! ” she cried. 

“ I have no right to cross-examine you,” said De Poy- 
anne. “ I am your friend, and ever will remain so. But 
now I am too full of trouble to s.ny much. To-morrow, 


238 


Was It Lffi^et 


if you will allow me, I will come to talk to you, to bid 
you a long farewell.” . . . 

Juliette started. 

“At two o’clock. We shall be calmer, both. Adieu ! 
Farewell, my only love ! ” 

“ Farewell, Henry ! ” 

Juliette was too oppressed with an indefinable sense of 
the horror of her life, concentrated now into this inter- 
view of half an hour, to be able to say more. 

This man was nobility itself in the midst of his jealousy. 
Oh ! to have been the wife of such a man ! 

Heavens ! but Juliette was doomed many a thousand 
times to see Count Henry de Poyanne’s expression and 
bearing as he kissed her hand. 

It was the last time that she ever saw him. 

When Gabrielle, a quarter of an hour later, stole into 
the room on tiptoe, she found her friend motionless, 
almost pulseless, on the sofa, her eyes wide open, her 
arms listless on the pillows. 

Time and grief were synonyms for Juliette hencefor- 
ward. Her betrothed had thrown her over. Fie was 
gone. She joyed no longer in the memory of the other. 
What was he to her — compared with Henry ? Did he 
say adieu, farewell ? that he would live ? that truth was 
truth, and love was love ? Then what was her affection, 
if not love ? Had she not loved him for three years ? 
Who could come between them ? These last three 
months were all a dismal dream. To-morrow, facts 
would reinstate themselves. To-morrow, Henry would 
come to see her after the sitting of the House, and tell 
her all his plans for the political future. Had it not 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


239 


always joyed her to listen to him ? And some day, some 
day, they would be married. Meanwhile, no one should 
come between them any more. They had been so happy 
in each other’s company. And they would be so 
yet. . . . 

“There has been — an accident ? ’’ asked the Countess, 
naturally alarmed by Juliette’s despondent attitude. 

“ No,’’ replied Juliette, “ the duel was fought. Casal is 
slightly wounded. In a day or two he will doubtless be 
well again.” 

“ You see that everything has turned out better than 
we could have hoped ! But why are you so sad ? What 
has Poyanne been saying to you t ” 

“Oh ! do not ask me,” Juliette moaned ; “leave me. 
It \%you that have undone me ! If you had never made 
me know that 7na7i, if you had never drawn him to your 
house, to mine, if you had never spoken of him as you 
did, all this had never happened.” 

Then, seeing tears surge up into poor Gabrielle’s eyes, 
Juliette threw herself into her friend’s arms, showing by 
this angry incoherence the disorder of her soul. There 
she sobbed like a broken-hearted child. In vain did 
Gabrielle essay to soothe her, to coax her to tell her all 
that was upon her mind. The reasons of the profound 
impression Henry had made upon her friend were all 
unknown to Gabrielle. She could not comfort her. At 
last she said : 

“ Let me now go and get what news there is from 
Casal’s people, and I will come to you again.” 

Juliette was once more alone with her sad and solemn 
thoughts. It was not on Casal she brooded, but on Henry 
Ever in her ears his voice repeated : "'Farewell^ my only 


240 


Was It Level 


love." What she longed for now was to see him again, 
to have an opportunity to explain, to speak to him, to 
hear his well-beloved voice. 

Perhaps to lie to him again, to show him some new 
phase of her duality ? Duplicity ? The last term was 
almost implied in the other ! 

No ; all was now told, all curtains between their spirits 
torn down. Now that he himself had had the courage to 
formulate those words of rupture she had hesitated even 
to whisper to herself, was she going to give way to her 
former madness and recommence those wicked ambigui- 
ties ? 

What asked she, then, of this lover, so devoted to her 
as to be capable of a superhuman renunciation ? 

By what mysterious process of the heart did Juliette, 
having for three months thought of nothing so much as 
of the happiness of being Raymond’s, now long, as never 
she had longed, for the presence of the one who had but 
lately seemed the trial and terror of her life ? 

All that afternoon and evening, almost all that night, 
these questions pressed for answers, vainly. The time ap- 
proached for Poyanne’s arrival, once again. 

One o’clock. Half-past. Two ! Half-past two ! 

He was not with her. 

Having a presentiment of some strange, some terrible 
resolve on the part of De Poyanne, Juliette took carriage 
for the Rue Martignac, only to learn that the Count had 
gone out, and that nobody knew anything about his move- 
ments. She returned home. He had not arrived. She 
wrote to him. The servants brought her letter back un- 
opened, for he was away. It was only on the following 
morning, and after another night of fearful anxieties, that 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


241 


she received a letter through the post with the well-known 
handwriting on it. It was with the eagerness of a girl of 
sixteen, who holds in her hands her first real love-letter, 
that she tore it open, and read as follows : 

“ Five O'clock, Evening, 

“ Passy. 

“ Dear Friend : In order to be able more freely to write you 
what is on my mind, I have come out here, to the old rooms where I 
spent two happy summers ; to the town in a certain shady alley of 
which you first promised to be my wife, when the mercy of Heaven 
should allow us to marry. 

“ Resuming for the moment, alas ! the memory of that which had 
been ever my fondest dream, my sacred hope for months and years, 
of living with you always, of having your soft presence ever by my 
side to fill my soul with sweetness, I have felt it easier here than it 
would have been in Paris to tell you, once for all, and for the last 
time, how greatly your society has compensated for my sad past, 
relieved many anxieties, how happy it has made me. And to thank 
you — but I never can sufficiently. 

“But oh! the lover whom death has separated from his sweet- 
heart, and who leans his head against the cold railings of her 
sepulchre, has not more melancholy in his soul than I have at this 
hour — I, who am making a pilgrimage in spirit to the burial-place of 
our fond past — not more melancholy, not more tenderness. , . . 
Well do I wish that but a little of what I feel may be made apparent 
to you in these pages, which you will read when I am far, far away 
from Paris. Well do I wish that you may retain of me the image, 
not of the man who spoke to you so strangely yesterday, but that of 
the friend who will ever think of you, who has ever thought of you 
as I am thinking at this minute, kindly, gently — oh ! so kindly, with 
inexpressible gratitude for what you have vouchsafed me of your 
heart. So good have you been to me that even at this moment, in 
this agony of my farewell, thinking of the months that you have let 
me love you, I can find nothing sweeter to say than to thank you 
from the core of my heart, and to thank you evermore. 

“ Understand, my dearest friend on earth, then, that I am not 
16 


242 


fVas It Love ? 


ungrateful to you, and that, in going away, as I am about to do, I 
know — yes, I know — that I am very dear to you, too, and that you 
have ever told the truth when you declared you could not bear to see 
me sad or sorry. I know that when you read, as here you do, that I 
have quitted France for a long, long time, if not forever, you will 
feel a real, a serious sorrow. 

‘ ‘ The struggles you have sustained I feel for and I understand. 
The internal drama that has played itself out in your soul is so 
clearly defined to me that I feel at once the extent of the devotion 
you have experienced for me, and how little that devotion resembles 
love. And )’ou yourself have reflected in such good faith, when you 
would not allow this to your conscience. You were proud ; you did 
not wish to recognize that you had changed ! You were kind ; you 
did not wish me to be wretched ! You were loyal ; you would not 
for one second admit the possibility of your owm treason toward one 
to whom you thought that you were bound for life ! 

“Alas ! Juliette, do not deceive yourself in this ; a sentiment that 
such reasons as these would not quell was a deep-rooted one. I had 
only to hear your cry yesterday, when you believed the fatal issue of 
the duel, to see your tears, knowing you so well, to have sufficient 
evidence. And if I go away, it is because I feel, in face of your 
new love, that I could not support the sight of all this face to face. 
Whether you struggle against it, or whether you yield to it, I should 
know how to interpret your sorrows, and your joys, in your attitude 
toward me and your spells of silence. And I am only a man, a man 
who loves you with all his heart, with all his soul, whom you, too, 
have loved, and from whom you cannot, and you ought not, to de- 
mand a superhuman energy. Besides, have I the right, now that all 
is known to me, to put my woe betwixt you and a new life, this love 
of mine you do not share, between your conscience and that which 
may become your happiness ? Have I the right to grieve you with 
the daily sight of a jealousy — I confess it with humility — I am unable 
to conquer? Have I the right to inflict on you this misplaced and 
morbid sensibility which you have already suffered from for weeks, 
for months, perhaps for years ? No, Juliette ; I perceive too well, 
in thus reviewing the inner history of our souls, the invincible neces- 
sity that two beings who have loved each other, when one has ceased 
to love, should part. It is most terrible. It is most bitter. It has 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


243 


the bitterness of death. But self-respect in life is bought at even 
such a price. 

‘‘ I have reflected well on all these things and on so many others. 
In our engagement, hidden by my wilfulness, I know that you have 
suffered from the necessity of keeping it from the world. It was 
I that was to blame. If, not being free to love you, I had forever 
cloaked my fervent passion in shadow and silence, who knows ? — He 
to whom all hearts are known, in His own time, might have recom- 
pensed me for the heroic effort by keeping the sources of future 
tenderness forever open in your soul ! Who knows if there be not 
reserved for some fortunate loves, formed of renunciation, a mys- 
terious grace, similar to the mystic grace of profound faith, which 
leaves the spirit free at every season to fly upward on the wings of 
prayer ? That which I ask of God in our behalf, is that if any fault 
of judgment has been shown, it may be visited on me, and not on 
you. 

“ That this new friend of yours, by whom your affections have been 
snatched from me, may become worthy of you, may comprehend the 
incarnate nobility and beauty that comes to him through so many 
fiery trials ! 

“ Let me here tell you that a change in this regard has wrought 
itself in me since yesterday. I spoke to you with infinite hostil- 
ity of the man in whom, by a weird clairvoyance, I recognized the 
executioner of my happiness. I cannot think, now, that I was 
altogether right, nor that a being who was capable of interesting 
you so greatly as to wake your love could be exactly what I mistook 
him for. I wished to, I ought, also, to have told you, that I have 
judged him differently since his letter of apology, so difficult for a 
man of that kind to write, has proved to me that he was devoted to 
you. after all, in a better fashion than I thought. And to tell you, 
now, what I did not mention yesterday, which, to be just, I must 
relate, he was logical with his letter, for instead of firing at me, he 
fired in the air ! May what I write of him prove an expiation of 
the passionate rancor that prevented me accepting his excuses ! 
And also give me the right to implore you to reflect long and well 
before you travel further on the road that you are on ! Study and 
test the sentiments he cherishes toward you ! He is free, he is young, 
he is the victim of no past. He can devote his life to you, trans- 


244 


fFas It Love 7 


form himself beneath your tender, noble influence. If things are 
thus, I do not say I shall not suffer when I learn that you have 
thus reconstructed your destiny. But know that this day I love you 
with a kindness so disinterested, so purified by recent martyrdoms, 
that I shall find that within me which will recompense me for wel- 
coming this idea of your new life with the peace which Holy Writ 
speaks of : ‘ I give you peace, my peace I give unto you, not as the 
world gives,’ the peace of a soul that loves forever, yet renounces 
love forever. 

“ And now, adieu, my sweet friend. Adieu ! thou who hast been 
the star in my sky, the spot of blue in a firmament hidden by so many 
clouds. Farewell, thou that permittedst me to live when I was at 
the end of my forces, thanks to whom I am able to say this day, ‘ T 
have tasted happiness.' Fear no desperate resolve on the part of 
the man who goes away from you, his heart full of you, in order that 
you may be happy, that he may never more cost you a single sigh ! 
In my dolorous meditations of last night, I have viewed in front of 
me what remains of existence, and decided as to its employment. I 
have recognized, too, in my last trials of politics a warning that I 
should have to renounce much in public life as well, and that re- 
nunciation did not cost me very much. Another field is opening td 
me, in which I have resolved to use the remainder of what strength 
I possess. Our private griefs would be surely cruelly useless if 
they did not lead us to seek oblivion in an impersonal duty, a dis- 
interested devotion to our best ideas. You have known too well my 
ideas of duty during the happy days when you allowed me to think 
aloud in your society, that I should now need to say more on this 
subject, save that I have resolved to go to the United States to work 
on that great book of social philosophy whose ground plan had such 
interest for you, whose execution supposes studies impossible any- 
where but over there, studies that will last for years ! 

“ To-morrow, when these sheets are in your hands, I shall be upon 
the sea, having for sole horizon only the vast body of the waves that 
will roll in ever-increasing myriads between us. My letter of resig- 
nation to the President of the Chamber is written. As for my 
affairs, I set them in order on the eve of the duel. Our noble Ludo- 
vic Accragne, whose divine charity you know, has charged himself 
with any arrangements that remain. 


The Last of the Lalyyrinth. 


245 


“ Your name was the first on the lips of that tender friend as soon 
as I broached my departure. I said to him I had already told you 
of it, and that you approved. And now it only remains for me to 
think of you, with a sadness and a tenderness that I can find no 
words for. 

“ You will write to me, will you not ? But not just yet. Let it be 
at a time when I can learn all about you without too much suffering. 

“ You will keep a comer for me in your affection, in your friend- 
ship, with which, if I were present, I should scarcely be con- 
tented. 

“ My heart is one so easily wounded : but absence will perhaps 
cure all that, and will only leave the immortal essence of a sentiment 
I now sum up : Be happy, even away from me, without me. . . . 

“Adieu, once more, angelic friend; remember, sometimes, that 
you always had my love. 

“ What more remains to say? save that old kind phrase, so touch- 
ing always to the loving spirit, which I breathe from my heart of 
hearts : May God bless and protect you, my own sweet love ! 

“ Henry.” 

Juliette let these leaves lie in her lap, the leaves on 
which her sweetheart of so long had imprinted his heart ; 
and her tears began to flow quietly, impossible to check. 
Henry was there in his entirety, with his forthrightness of 
thought, which, even in this dread hour of separation, had 
no room for littleness, for bitterness, for jealousy ; with 
the ardor of an almost religious love, which caused him 
almost to feel the ecstasy of a martyr under the sufferings 
of renunciation ; with his faith in ideas, so profound that 
he brought up his grand project of a history of socialism 
with the ilan of an apostle, in these pages of adieu to his 
adored one. 

Once more she saw Henry de Poyanne as he was at their 
first meeting. How strongly she had even then felt that 
he was not a man of these days, with his character that re- 


246 


fFas It Level 


mained intact before the compromises of a century deadly 
to the half-way thinker ! How delicately he had courted 
her ; with what tenderness had she seen him return to 
social life, and with what joy ! 

He had girdled her life with so much regard ! With 
this new gift of freedom, what would she now become ? 
What was this that she had do7ie 1 . . . Even if she now 
wished to prevent his departure, to protest against this 
adieu, to refuse this proffered liberty, she was unable to 
do so. The soft phrases of this supreme message made 
a new conquest of her being ; they gave her back the 
Henry of the long ago, absorbing, effacing the sentiments 
of the last three months. This return in full of the whole 
past, the sole fragile relic of which she held between her 
hands, could not last forever. It was nevertheless so 
complete, all day, she had no thoughts save for the absent 
one, the one who had taken to flight because he loved 
her so ! It was only toward night-fall that she was awak- 
ened from this somnambulism in the by-gone years by the 
entrance of Gabrielle with news of the wounded man. 
She now reproached herself with having forgotten him, 
because his sufferings, also, were for her. 

“ He will be well in a few days,” said the Countess. 
“ I trust they won’t begin fighting again when he gets 
about ! ” 

“ They will not be able,” said Juliette, gloomily. 
“ Read this letter.” 

And she handed Madame de Candolle the newly tear- 
stained sheets on which Henry had printed his magnani- 
mous being, which Juliette also, too late, desired her friend 
to appreciate. She could see the Countess’s eyes well up 
and overflow with sympathetic tears ; and it was with a 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


247 


sister’s kiss that Gabrielle cried aloud in her regret and 
sorrow : 

“ Heavens ! if I had only known this man’s grand 
nature sooner ! ” And then, with hesitation, handing 
her back the letter : 

“But about Casal, what does he know ? ’’ 

“ He knows all. I told him.” 

“ You ? ” Gabrielle was lost in thought. 

Juliette and Raymond, then, had seen each other since 
the latter had been at the Rue Tilsitt ? They must have 
talked most confidentially together, if such an avowal was 
made. Gabrielle saw these fresh signs of them coming 
to an understanding, and continued ; 

“ If he tries to see you again, now that your engage- 
ment with Henry is all over, what will you do ? For he 
is sure to know. The papers are sure to mention the res- 
ignation of the Leader and first orator of the Right, and 
of his voyage to the United States.” 

“ If he tries to see me,” said Madame de Tilliere, rais- 
ing herself with her old-time haughtiness, “ I will show 
him the kind of woman he has to deal with ! ” 

So loath was Gabrielle to touch the recent wounds in her 
dear friend’s heart that she asked no explanation of this 
enigmatic reply, although she was unable to guess its gist. 
Juliette had compounded, at the long last, with her own 
conscience by coming to a vague but unalterable decision 
to have nothing more to say to this man, the source of all 
her woe and Henry’s. Her effort to appear reasonably 
calm before her mother’s penetrating eyes on her return 
from visiting Casal, all those protracted anxieties about 
the duel, the terrible progress of the drama of her soul 
when the Count confronted her with the truth — all these 


248 


JVas It Love! 


distresses now appeared to her so many dangers past. 
The insoluble had been solved by time, and what men 
vainly christen chance. Her mother was satisfied ; the 
duel had been fought ; the drama, thanks to De Poyanne’s 
definitive actions and decision, had progressed far in the 
final act. Now only remained the last and most redoubt- 
able problem, Raymond Casal. Thus she found herself 
alone and free, in face of an unknown whom Gabrielle’s 
phrase brought once more to her mind. What course 
should she pursue ? 

When the Countess had taken her leave, Juliette 
searched in a drawer in her escritoire, and pulled out 
Casal’s last letter, the one he had written on the eve of 
the duel. She reread it with profound sadness ; the 
unavoidable comparison between the tone of that note 
and Henry’s noble letter was doubly bitter now that the 
latter was so far away. Raymond’s light way of addressing 
her as his “ charming friend,” with his implied reference 
to the future terms on which they were to meet, sounded 
so inexpressibly vulgar ! What a contrast to the gentle- 
ness and deference that, like a double aureole, ever sur- 
rounded De Poyanne ! And like a dash of cold water 
came the thought, What did she really know of this Casal ? 
That he was a man of the world, that he had had many 
loves, and had been faithful to none, that he had taken a 
violent fancy to her, and persistently pursued her, even 
though the chase might have led across her lover’s corpse 
— that was really all she knew about him ! The latter 
knowledge led to a painful revulsion. She remembered 
now the previous repute of Casal for cynical brutality ; 
and she saw that his recent conduct in picking a quarrel 
with the Count had not belied it. She trembled, not 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


249 


alone on account of the still unveiled mysteries of this 
man’s past, but for her own future if she should in any 
way allow him to assume its mastership. The intensity of 
emotion she had experienced when she permitted Ray- 
mond, for the first and last time, to press his lips to hers, 
was enough to give her pause, to make her ask herself 
what use this man would make of his power over her if 
she should ever make of him the future foreground of 
her life. 

It would be too late to recede, she thought, if she 
should ever allow Raymond to think again that he could 
tune her heartstrings to his wish. What if the years of 
devotion that De Poyanne had squandered at her feet 
were in Casal’s case but a passing whim ? It might be so, 
and it was safer so to view it. That dear one, now tossing 
on the lonely ocean — with all his soul in his strained west- 
ward look, with all his happiness behind him — should 
never have to say, in what years might come, that she 
had neglected a caution which, from his parting lips, 
had all the force of an injunction from the dying ! 

What now remained for her to do ? 


During the few days of respite yielded her by the forced 
seclusion of Raymond Casal, a project began to form 
in her mind, the only way of reconciling all the oppos- 
ing elements of Juliette’s soul. It satisfied at one and 
the same time her heart-hunger to remain worthy of the 
worship of Poyanne, and her newly discovered wish to 
show herself she really was not the weak woman, swayed 
by the veering wind of every new emotion, the events of 
the last few months had indicated. This project accorded, 


250 


Was It Love 1 


also, with the deadly lassitude caused by so many cruel 
disappointments. 

What if she never saw Raymond Casal again ? — if, 
leaving Paris, and forever, before he had time to regain 
her ear, she sought refuge in her childhood’s home and 
asylum, that dear estate of Nan^ay, where, in her first 
great sorrow in 1870, she had already experienced the 
strange consolations of nature and of solitude ? 

Raymond would certainly soon know of De Poyanne’s 
departure for America. Would he accept her own flight 
as final Would he not now pursue her to her retreat ? 
Well, if he did, she would fly further yet. Once entered 
on that definite course of estrangement of which Poyanne 
had set such a brave example, she felt her strength 
would grow with danger ; and she saw, in the far future 
the sweet haven and the dream sublime of all those souls 
that have been wrecked for love’s dear sake, unique 
refuge against Raymond Casal and all the world — the 
cloister ! 

Of the woman who thus rounds off her life in the aus- 
terities of a nunnery, under the shadow of the cross, what 
man can think an unkind, ungenerous thought ? And 
this taking the vow would cost her, half mortified already 
as her spirit seemed, so little. Betwixt her and the sainted 
asylum only stood Madame de Nangay. 

“ But, no ; I must not, cannot, quit the world yet, be- 
cause of dear mamma.” 

This was an obstacle of which she had not thought. 
Already it would be hard enough to make her poor 
mother accept an absolute exile far from dear Paris, and 
relinquish every hope of still seeing her idolized daughter 
remarried. 


The Last of the Labyrinth, 


251 


What excuse would, even now, justify this sudden reso- 
lution ? The fear of this coming interview was so over- 
whelming that Juliette put it off from morning till even- 
ing, from night to day again ^ and in that state things 
would have remained had she not, on the afternoon of the 
fourth day, been compelled to take action by the near 
approach of Raymond. As she came in from a long and 
lonely walk in her favorite part of the Bois de Boulogne, 
she discovered that a co7nmissionnaire during her absence 
had brought in an immense basket of white lilac and red 
and white roses and mauve-purple orchids, to which was 
tied a letter, the writing on which seemed to scorch her 
eyes. Although the characters were altered, as if directed 
by a hand that held the pen with difficulty, she recog- 
nized the writing of Casal. Inclosed, and scribbled on 
a card, she read ; 

“The first words I am able to write are to reassure my sweet 
friend, and to ask her at what hour I may present myself the first 
time I come out — to-morrow. 

“ R. C.” 

Whilst reading this letter, that had cost its writer such 
an effort, Juliette breathed the rich aroma of the roses and 
lilac, whose perfume enveloped her like a cunning caress, 
while the card she held in her hands seemed to be instinct 
with an insinuation of mastership. 

Instantaneously, and as if she was battling with some 
dreadful sacrilege, she tore the card into twenty pieces, 
and threw the butterfly morsels with a sweeping arm out of 
her open window onto the gravel pathway. Then, having 
carried the great, sweet basketful of flowers into the open 
air, where their scent no longer could attack her, she fell 


252 


Was It Love ? 


on her knees, with a flood of tears, and prayed the prayers 
of girlhood. 

What drama of more than mortal mystery was out- 
knelled in Juliette’s suffg-ing soul during that hour — 
w’hich was of a surety the hour of her life 7 

Is there, as the instinct of all the ages has supposed, 
in the prayer of a sorrowful heart which is thus launched 
spaceward toward the Unknown Spirit, the Author of 
our destiny, a real force of reparation, a chance of ob- 
taining reenforcements for our weakened will ? 

Was it at this instant that Juliette pronounced, with 
her conscience for sole witness, the awful vow that, in less 
than a year, she was destined to fulfil ? . 

When she rose from her knees, her crystal eyes beamed 
with a strange light, her face was glorified with a new 
expression. She went at once to seek her mother, who, 
seeing Juliette thus, as it were, transfigured, was lost in 
astonishment. 

“ What is it you wish to tell me with that exalted look 
of yours ? ” Having observed her beloved daughter so 
sad for now so many days, the change alarmed her. 

“ A resolution that you must approve, mamma, how- 
ever unreasonable it may seem to you ! I start for Nan- 
9ay to-night.” 

“ But are you mad ? ” her mother cried. “ You forget 
the doctor has you in his charge, and ” 

“ Oh ! if my health is all that is in doubt ! ” exclaimed 
Madame de Tilliere ; then very gravely, almost with tragic 
intensity : 

“ You wish your daughter to be happy ? ” 

“ To be happy ? ” repeated Madame de Nan9ay, help- 
lessly. Then forcing Juliette into a low chair, and strok- 


The Last of the Labyrinth. 


253 


ing her hair : “ Confess yourself to the poor old mother 
that loves you. Some mad idea has formed inside this 
pretty head. You have such a knack of spoiling with 
your dim imaginings a life that might have been so 
happy ! ” 

“ No, mamma, these . are neither ideas nor imaginings. 
I love a man whose wife I dare not, cannot, will not be. 
I feel that if I stay here I am lost. Lost, dost thou hear, 
my mother ? ” 

“ What ! It is the departure of the Count Poyanne that 
has upset you so ! ” cried Madame de Nanpay. “ I knew 
your heart was troubled. I guessed it was for him, and 
that the dear man went away because he was not free to 
marry you ! ” 

“ Ask me no questions, dearest. I can tell you nothing, 
give no further explanation. But if you love me, under- 
stand this resolution is forced on me by anguish, and 
promise me that you will not prevent me doing as I 
wish ! ” 

“ Ah ! you will never leave me for a convetit ? " 

“ No ; but I wish to retire from Paris — forever, to give 
up this house forever, never more to set foot in this town. 
Forgive me if I leave to you the details of departure ! 
My things can be sent after me to Nancay, where I will 
await you, mother.” 

“ Reflect, my child. In a month, in a year, you will 
be sick to death of solitude and Nanpay. These senti- 
ments that rack you now will soon be dead within you. 
Life in- the country, with no other companionship than 
that of your old mother, will appear to you, will prove, 
unbearable.” 

With thee, my mother, ever with thee, my happiness, 


254 


f 

Was It Love 7 


my safety ! ” cried poor Juliette, letting fall hot tears on 
the wrinkled hands she kissed so fondly. 

“ Ah ! do not deny me. You love me, wish me leal and 
good. Help me to save myself.” 

“ Ever with me,” sighed Madame de Nan^ay, with the 
sobriety of sadness infinite. “ And what will become of 
you, alone in the world, when / am no longer with you ? ” 
“ When^i?/^ are no longer with me,” breathed Juliette, 
convulsively embracing her mother, “ I shall have God.” 


FINIS. 




THE DISMISSAL OF CASAL. 


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